Plays 1: Look Back in Anger / Epitaph for George Dillion / The World of Paul Slickey / Dejavu

by John Osborne

A collection of some of Osborne's early plays, as well as his last, "Dejavu", which features Jimmy Porter of "Look Back in Anger", 35 years on, older and wiser, but no less indignantly eloquent.

Genres: Plays, Drama

392 pages, Paperback

First published June 6, 1996

About the author

People best know British playwright John James Osborne, member of the Angry Young Men, for his play Look Back in Anger (1956); vigorous social protest characterizes works of this group of English writers of the 1950s.

This screenwriter acted and criticized the Establishment. The stunning success of Look Back in Anger transformed English theatre. In a productive life of more than four decades, Osborne explored many themes and genres, writing for stage, film and television. His extravagant and iconoclastic personal life flourished. He notoriously used language of the ornate violence on behalf of the political causes that he supported and against his own family, including his wives and children, who nevertheless often gave as good as they got.

He came onto the theatrical scene at a time when British acting enjoyed a golden age, but most great plays came from the United States and France. The complexities of the postwar period blinded British plays. In the post-imperial age, Osborne of the writers first addressed purpose of Britain. He first questioned the point of the monarchy on a prominent public stage. During his peak from 1956 to 1966, he helped to make contempt an acceptable and then even cliched onstage emotion, argued for the cleansing wisdom of bad behavior and bad taste, and combined unsparing truthfulness with devastating wit.

Reviews

[Paul O'Leary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stumbled onto John Osborne after rewatching Get Carter. I know, I know; the less said about that the better. Still, the “angry young man” of Looking Back In Anger held an interest for me beyond its historical importance for the theatre. Were the English twenty-somethings back then that discontent the great battles had already been won, that the daily suffering had been leaked empty of its romanticism, that the great challenge left for truculent youth was to get through the Sunday editions in one piece? John Osborn could never live this play down, or get past it. His main character of Looking Back, Jimmy Porter, followed him the rest of his life, giving Osborne the fame, the fortune, and the crippling insecurity that only an indefatigable creation can inflict on its creator. I actually enjoyed Porter’s return in the 80s play Déjàvu more than his introduction from the 50s. This is not a common opinion among the theatre-going public or the well-read, but I’m sticking with it, Jimmy Porter style.

[Rolls · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Look Back in Anger" is as amazing a first play as has ever been performed.