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The Review - THEATRE by DAVID GAVAN
Published: 10 July 2008

New Look, classic commentary

LOOK BACK IN ANGER
Jermyn Street Theatre

JOHN Osborne’s blistering 1956 play Look Back In Anger is often spoken of in terms of it being a grenade lobbed by the playwright at Britain’s old establishment.
Perhaps it’s truer to say that Osborne kicked down the façade of order that masked the existential hangover that followed the Second World War. At this time, cracks were beginning to appear in the old system, and the invasion of Suez only served to underline the loss of Britain’s Empire.
Watching Alexander Gilmour’s mostly on-the-money revival is like wandering through a ruined city while an authentic soundtrack is being played very loudly.
And I mean that in a good way.
Boasting Marialena Kapotopoulou’s beautiful set, some wonderful turns – not least Laura Dos Santos’s masochistic Alison Porter, and Gary Raymond’s wanly melancholic Colonel Redfern – the show avoids all hints of fustiness.
This production clearly shows Jimmy Akingbola’s impassioned Jimmy Porter suffering from more than political outrage or social alienation. He’s fatally flawed in that he desires women physically, yet finds emotional sustenance in men.
And while Porter is an invective-spewing child, Osborne’s language and gift for characterisation keep the audience hooked.
However, the casting of a black actor who keeps lapsing into an ironic Jamaican accent is an unfortunate misconceived touch. It’s almost as though the director is trying to make this great play about a different age “relevant”.
What’s more, this may well confuse those who are new to the play.
During the 1950s Jimmy’s brand of lower-middle-class ennui was beyond the reach of most British black people. And while a colourblind Look Back is fine – Akingbola certainly has the charisma to play Jimmy – it is unwise to graft on the issue of race.
In the programme, the director mistakenly tries to compare these times with those of Jimmy Porter. Both periods, he argues, are bogged down by apathy. But in a post-Cold War world, ours is more an environment of postmodern irony. Perhaps this mis-diagnosis of the times leads Gilmour to try and update Osborne’s play.
But, as this sparkling evening shows, great writing always deserves to be revisited.
Until July 26
0207 287 2875

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