By Neil Durham

WORTH A LOOK?: ****

WHEN?: Wednesday 25 September 2024, runs through 23 November 2024 RUNTIME: 165 minutes (including a 20-minute interval)

Middle class Alison irons while her educated husband Jimmy and their Welsh working class lodger Cliff read the Sunday papers as the weekend in their Midlands flat draws to a close.

• Read on for reasons including how this remains a fascinating if difficult watch that is occasionally funny but will make you think about class and masculinity

So begins John Osborne’s 1956 play which dragged theatre preoccupied with drawing room drama towards the kitchen sink and gave voice to ‘angry young men’ unhappy at the lack of change in post-World War Two Britain.

Director Atri Banerjee gives us a bare circular stage with revolve and partial back wall against which items central to the play can be brought forward: an ironing board and interlinked bear and squirrel toys included.

Look Back In Anger is the story of Jimmy who is intelligent but struggling to find his purpose in life, running a sweet stall with his lodger Cliff and married to the similarly capable Alison who has deserted her privileged family to be in these unfamiliar surroundings.

Jimmy bullies Alison in an attempt to awaken her from her perceived lethargy and wishes she would come to know the pain he has suffered in watching a loved one die.

Billy Howle (Dear Octopus, National Theatre and pictured left above) is Jimmy in a play we studied almost 40 years ago and his character’s controlling behaviour of his wife is arguably more troubling now than when this work debuted.

Ellora Torchia plays Alison and has the greatest journey to travel as we discover that she is pregnant by Jimmy but doesn’t know how to break the news to him and it is only when the couple use the bear and squirrel toys to address their real affection for each other that she feels most comfortable.

Morfydd Clark, who appears in Prime’s The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power, arrives as Alison’s actress friend Helena who Jimmy seems to despise even more than his wife and the scene is set as she urges Alison to leave her husband.

Iwan Davies’s Cliff (Backstairs Billy, Duke Of York’s Theatre) gives a real sense of offering a no-man’s land in the domestic battle between Jimmy and Alison.

This Anger is cast beautifully and director Banerjee’s vision is at its most moving at its climax when Torchia’s Alison appears struggling in the metaphorical mud that Howle’s convincing yet troubling Jimmy wished for her.

It’s important to remember when viewing this through 2024 eyes that this is very much still rooted in the 50s and it remains a fascinating if difficult watch that is occasionally funny but will make you think about class, masculinity and whether any progress has been made.

• Main pictures via Facebook courtesy Almeida Theatre Tickets
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