Look Back in Anger: A Play in Three ActsJimmy Porter plays trumpet badly. He browbeats his flatmate, terrorizes his wife, and is not above sleeping with her best friend-who loathes Jimmy almost as much as he loathes himself. Yet this working-class Hamlet, the original Angry Young Man, is one of the most mesmerizing characters ever to burst onto a stage, a malevolently vital, volcanically articulate internal exile in the dreary, dreaming Siberia of postwar England. First produced in 1956, Look Back in Anger launched a revolution in the English theater. Savagely, sadly, and always impolitely, it compels readers and audiences to acknowledge the hidden currents of rottenness and rage in what used to be called "the good life." Book jacket. |
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ACT THREE ALISON nods ALISON starts anyway arm of chair armchair ashtray and matches banging bear believe better boyo chest of drawers cigarette cistern CLIFF LEWIS CLIFF sits colander COLONEL REDFERN coming Coptic damned dear dressing table Edwardian everything eyes face feel floor food cupboard friends gas stove girl give Goes to dressing going grinning hand handbag head headboard HELENA CHARLES Hugh hurt ical ironing board jazz JIMMY JIMMY crosses JIMMY PORTER JIMMY's kick kisses KITCHEN knew leans listen little Gidding Madeline married mind minutes Miss Drury mother never pajama tops Perhaps polyphony PORTER posh pretty quickly raincoat remember Scene seems shirt Slight pause sorry squirrel stands stinks stop suddenly suppose sweet stall takes talk tell There's thing thought told tonight trousers trumpet trying turns voice wardrobe watching wearing window wrong