Look Back in Anger/Roots review – double bill of 1950s gamechanging kitchen sink dramas

Almeida theatre, London
Watching John Osborne’s fulminating Jimmy Porter feels curiously cold, while the same cast bring subtleties to Arnold Wesker’s classic

The “angry young man” has not aged so well. At least, not John Osborne’s pugilistic sweet-stall seller in Look Back in Anger (★★☆☆☆). Having erupted on to the stage in 1956, he looks like a charmless, self-pitying tyrant here who weaponises his working-class chip against his wife.

Director Atri Banerjee leans into the version of Jimmy Porter (Billy Howle) as coercive controller and while it is an instinctive interpretation for our day, forensically rendered, it butts up against the play’s shining legacy as a cri de coeur of class consciousness.

At the Almeida theatre, London, until 23 November

Continue reading...