Left – Andrew Henry. Cover – Robin Goldsworthy, Melissa Bonne and Andrew Henry. Photos – John MarmarasLook forward to Look Back In Anger, Redline's 60th Anniversary production of John Osborne’s celebrated play.
Rather than a relic from a bygone dead and buried time, this production thrillingly shows that Look Back In Anger is certainly worth looking back at. Why? Because it is vital, provocative, incendiary and funny.
Few contemporary audience members won't get a knowing chuckle from Jimmy Porter's opening lines, “Why do I do this every Sunday. Even the book reviews seem to be the same as last week's. Different books. Same reviews.”
Jimmy is a devourer of all the press, the posh and the pleb, a sophisticated, articulate working class man, a University educated man who runs a sweet stall, and rails against the apathy of society, a barbed tirade against the barbiturate Britain had become.
He sees middle class good taste and reticence as stultifying and corrosive and provokes and attacks it with ebullient free wheeling rancour and excoriating candour.
The eloquence of his conviction is, however, purulent, the expressive turning excessive, postulating pronouncements rolling into pontificating, a grandiloquent delinquent to domestic duty, incessantly insensitive to his spouse. Jimmy is a silver tongued, bile bilged bully.
Early in the play, he calls his wife, Alison, pusillanimous, and not getting the desired rise from her, or their lodger, Cliff, displays infantile petulance by throwing himself under the bed.
Taunting, teasing and tantrum are staples for Jimmy, but his caustic wit and robust ribaldry temper his contemptible behaviour, and a lot of what he is contemptuous of – phoneyness, political correctness and apathy – resonates resoundingly in the current climate of political spin and fatuous social media.
But it's not all unrelenting rant. His love of music, jazz in particular, prompts improvised raps, and there is an hilarious impromptu Flanagan and Allen routine with Cliff.
Osborne's script is tungsten tough and full of irony awe, not least the fact that the friend that urges Alison to leave Jimmy, an actress named Helena, replaces her in Jimmy's bed and attendant ironing board.
Andrew Henry, a big bear performance in the demanding and taxing role of Jimmy Porter, delivers an exacting portrayal of the playwright's description, “a disconcerting mixture of sincerity and cheerful malice, of tenderness and free booting cruelty”.
As his squirrel spouse, Alison, Melissa Bonne is heartbreakingly fine, a model of saintly restraint, resigned yet resilient, refined yet raw.
Robin Goldsworthy as the mousey Cliff, sartorially scruffy in moth eaten pullover, exudes warmth and calm, supplying a soothing natural counterpoint to Jimmy.
Chantelle Jamieson as the feline Helena, part lynx, part minx, simultaneously revolted and attracted to Jimmy, carries the poise, elegance and glamour of the character's theatrical background.
Dual directorship often spells discord but the symbiotic steering of Lizzie Schebester and Damien Ryan makes for safe stewardship of this superbly staged classic.
Jonathan Hindmarsh's claustrophobic bed sit set with rising damp, peeling wall paper, brick wall view and skylight to all the clouds that lour'd upon the house is remarkably evocative, augmented by Ross Graham's lighting and Anna Gardiner's marvellous costume design.
Powerful and provocative, Look Back In Anger plays The Old Fitz till September 10, with an encore five show season at Belvoir, September 13–17.
Miss it and you'll look back in anguish.
Red Line Productions presents
LOOK BACK IN ANGER
by John Osborne
Directed by Damien Ryan and Lizzie Schebesta
Venue: Old Fitz Theatre | 129 Dowling Street (Cnr Cathedral Street), Woolloomooloo NSW
Dates: 16 August – 10 September 2016
Tickets: $38 – $33
Bookings: www.oldfitztheatre.com/look-back-in-anger
