| Powerful Production of Osborne Mould-Breaker |
Look Back in Anger |
| Bold Productions , Aberystwyth Arts Centre , March 12, 2010 |
The colours that Hans Memling and his contemporaries used in their fifteenth century portraits are so accurate that doctors can discern illnesses in their subjects that were undiagnosed until centuries later. The metaphors that Shakespeare used in “King Lear” indicate a sufferer from acute arteriosclerosis. In these new and highly medicalised times John Osborne’s titanic creation Jimmy Porter could be viewed less as a mouthpiece for existential rage than as a human stranded midway between Asperger’s, depression or bipolar disorder. This is not to corral the writing into an area of specific pathology. But it is to say the most potent writing has a protean force to it that opens up endless new areas of interpretation.Jimmy has after all worked in both journalism and advertising in that golden time when jobs were there for every graduate. An acid tongue and a degree of bile are disqualifiers for neither profession. It used to be implicit that beneath his cruelty and sheer disconnection he is fuelled with a thorny integrity. A fresh audience might prefer to infer that it is behavioural factors that have led to his running his sweet stall. He is after all a character who cannot even escape depression on the night of his marriage. Whatever the speculations on character Richard Hull’s playing lets in not a trace of victimhood. It is the other characters who pass judgement. “Don’t take his suffering away.” There are no footlights in Aberystwyth’s studio so that Richard Hull’s eyes are frequently in shadow. With a wrinkle of disdain of his nose and a nervy tapping of the fingers his Jimmy speaks Osborne’s language with a crafted articulation. The speech on the death of his father is beautifully modulated with an extra sibilant “s” on the word “fuss”. The author’s tone in real life towards his numerous wives is now notorious from the volumes of autobiography. Like “Crazy Gary…”, however, nine years ago it is an error to mistake the author’s voice for the character’s. Alison’s lack of autonomy can be seen every week in letters to the problem pages. Hers is the part that is the hardest to carry. Happily, Sarah Mair Gates manages with conviction lines like “I want to be a lost cause” and “I’m in the fire and I’m burning” which hang quite heavy now. Andrea Edwards has all the physical ease and breezy authoritativeness of the upper middle class gel. (The bossiness that is given to women in British films of the fifties is quite startling.) She and a transformed David Blumfield speak with the queenly vowels of “bairst” for “best” and “orff” for “off”. Stephen Wright’s Cliff is played warmly and Welshly but in his Tenovus pullover and pigtail he is manifestly not a figure of the time. The 1950’s are a foreign land- it was all the more surprising that its values were rehabilitated by Howard Brenton last year in “Never So Good”- and there are all manner of unspokens in the play. The bonds of marriage then were made of steel rather than gossamer. The nuclear shadow is present. To locate it firmly in its period is not to restrict it to its period. I differ with respect from director Richard Hogger that there is need for “a timeless and isolated world.” The text has been trimmed to an hour and forty minutes which will have the watchdogs of textual purity howling with protest. It is a good decision, not least for consideration of the space. Barbara Hogger has filled the small performance area with ugly utility furniture, right down to the detail of the ironing board of wood. The textual cuts are invisible and the space is too compressed to be right for the level of Jimmy’s rhetoric. In many ways to write in 2010 about “Look Back in Anger” is irrelevant in the context of the torrents that have passed before. It is enough to say that it is a rare work that lasts a decade or more. For a text to reach age fifty-four and still be a rampaging, provocative stage presence says it all. Any doubters should pay a revisit to Peter Shaffer’s big hit of a couple of years later “Five Finger Exercise” to see the difference. Most of all it catches, in John Osborne’s own phrase, “the comfortless tragedy of isolated hearts.” Catch it at Swansea’s Grand Theatre Thursday and Friday March 18th/19th |
Reviewed by: Adam Somerset |
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