LOOK BACK IN ANGER
The plot is simple. Jimmy Porter, a young lower-class intellectual, doesn’t manage to suffer his indignation silently. His relentless ranting annoys his friend Cliff, and the abuse and sarcasm Jimmy dumps on his middle-class wife, Alison, eventually gets under her skin. Alison, who has concealed her pregnancy from Jimmy, goes home to Mummy and Daddy and miscarries. Meanwhile, Jimmy plays house with Alison’s friend, Helena, but then that falls apart too. In the end, Jimmy and Alison get back together, but it’s not exactly an occasion to break out into song.
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Direction, too, is lacking. It wasn’t ten minutes into the show before I found my attention drifting to relatively unimportant details. I noticed what a super job Alison was doing on those shirts, and with an antique iron, no less. Then I toyed with the idea of recasting the role of Jimmy with Robert Smith (who plays Cliff). By intermission I realized that the majority of my impressions were about what the play could have been, rather than about what it was. It seemed as if Tammy Berlin’s direction were standing in the way of, instead of enhancing, my appreciation of the play. I mean, OK, a well-ironed shirt can be a wondrous thing, but the highlight of the opening scene of Look Back in Anger?
