The Life and Music of the original Angry Young Man

On May 8th 1956, Look Back in Anger opened at the Royal Court Theatre as the third production of the newly formed English Stage Company. It was viewed as a play that would provide a euphoric blow to the customary and old English theatre.

The changes in popular culture between 1950 and 1960 in Britain have been called a “cultural revolution”. Whatever was revolutionary about this era must have some bearing on both the genesis and reception of the ground-breaking play Look Back in Anger, by John Osborne. Appearing in the middle of the decade Osborne's drama initiated the cultural moment of the Angry Young Man. Precisely which young men were angry at this time and why are questions that lead back to this concept of the Cultural Revolution. Understanding Osborne's Jimmy Porter, the original Angry Young Man can take the researcher away from literary culture and deep into British popular culture. The cultural revolution of the 50s can be constituted with permissiveness, cosmopolitanism, new class attitudes and youth, each of which is manifested by distinctive artefacts such as cinema, popular music, the daily papers and other texts that surrounded the ordinary person on an ordinary working day. These four areas encompass the change in social attitudes and behaviour between the end of post-war austerity and the onset of world recession in the 1970s. By the end of this time, British society dressed differently, ate differently, even worked differently, and all of these physical changes indicated alterations in deeper emotional and intellectual attitudes.

Historians will trace such social changes to a range of causes: the ending of war time rationing, increases in working class wages, the availability of new industrial and domestic technologies, rising living standards and the demolition of Britain's imperial role, as Empire shifted to Commonwealth. These comprise a useful list of enlightening facts; making such facts come alive for Osborne's play is though different. There was more to it.

In the fifties, a new type of music was introduced, one that had particular appeal to youth and would redefine the genre of popular entertainment. The lyrics of ‘rock and roll’ shifted emphasis away from the conventional ideals of love and marriage, and stressed instead the desirability of having a good time in the here and now. Mention of partying, dancing all night and staying out all night became normal in the new style of music. Rock and roll asserted that good times, post war times were here and were to be enjoyed. This kind of lyric enshrined another kind of escapism, Instead of sunsets, hummingbirds and angels, these lyrics permitted dreams of a mindless physical jolt. In parallel with this escapist element, however, a certain type of realistic detail was beginning to appear in rock music: the trivia of working-class lives. This motif is relevant here because of Look Back in Anger’s status as part of the kitchen sink school, the new drama that dealt with the everyday details of the most mundane lives, and dwelt on the concrete properties of a working class life.

Jimmy Porter spoke for a large segment of the British population in 1956 when he complained about his alienation from a society in which he was denied any meaningful role. Although he was educated at a "white-tile" university, a reference to the newest and least prestigious universities in the United Kingdom, the real power and opportunities were reserved for the children of the Establishment, those born to privilege, family connections, and entry to the "right" schools. Part of the Establishment etiquette was the "stiff upper lip," that reticence to show or even to feel strong emotions. Jimmy's alienation from Alison comes precisely because he cannot break through her "cool," her unwillingness to feel deeply even during sexual intercourse with her husband. He berates her in a coarse attempt to get her to strike out at him, to stop "sitting on the fence" and make a full commitment to her real emotions; he wants to force her to feel and to have vital life. He calls her "Lady Pusillanimous" because he sees her as too cowardly to commit to anything. Jimmy is anxious to give a great deal and is deeply angry because no one seems interested enough to take from him, including his wife.

While Jimmy criticizes everyone around him to open them to their honest feelings, he is struggling with his own problems of identity. He doesn't seem to fit in anywhere in society. Jimmy sees suffering the pain of life as the only way to find, or "earn," one's true identity. Alison, who seems immune to this, does finally suffer the immeasurable loss of her unborn child and comes back to Jimmy, who seems to embrace her. Helena discovers that she can be herself only if she lives according to her principles of right and wrong. Jimmy calls Cliff as "just one of those sturdy old plants left over from the Edwardian Wilderness that can't understand why the sun isn't shining anymore”.

Most good plays embody more than one myth. Though Jimmy's alienation, his feeling of being out of place, his idealising of the past, and his use of memory as a defence against meaninglessness - drives the play along, none of this happens in a vacuum. What gives Osborne's portrait of the individual its power is that it also portrays a national malaise. Jimmy's personal way of looking back is congruent with his country's way of looking back. Both share assumptions about explaining current woes by contrasting them with an idealised past. And not only is the play's essential Englishness implicit in the structure of its main situations, it is also explicit in its basic belief that literature can change the world. Look Back in Anger became the most symbolic play of its decade not because it was the profoundest, but because it was the most English.

By 1956 the British Empire had been shrinking for decades, with the granting of independence to India in 1947, the loss of African colonies and the near independence of the Commonwealth nations such as Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. The Suez crises in 1956, in which Egypt refused to renew the British-owned Suez Canal Company's concession, resulted in a disastrous and humiliating intervention by England, and emphasized the lack of power wielded by Britain in the post World War II world.

The Church of England, too, was out of touch with the daily lives of most Englishmen. The church was not simply a spiritual leader but also the owner of vast properties and thus a member of the landholding class. The church is attacked by Jimmy, who quotes the fictional Bishop of Bromley as saying that he is upset because someone has suggested that he supports the rich against the poor.

London theatre at the time has been described as “a vast desert” only interested in innocuous little plays which would provide a vehicle for a star to achieve a long and tedious run. The Arts Council of Great Britain had been formed after World War II to support the arts nationwide, but it had severely limited funds. London theatre in 1955 was commercial theatre. Terence Rattigan was represented with his plays The Deep Blue Sea and Separate Tables. Most plays were light comedies, farces, and mysteries—including Agatha Christie's The Mouse Trap, which has continued to enjoy successful productions.

The setting and manifest action in Osborne’s play show us “the way things actually are;” the play’s allusions provide clues to the contrasting mythology. One can trace the mythology carried primarily pop culture especially to its strong message about the place of love and romance in people’s lives. According to the ideology of the earlier music, Jimmy and Alison have done the right thing and should be living in gratification. According to the emerging rock and roll ideology, however, Jimmy has married too soon. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that he was born too soon. Helena makes a similar realization in the final scene of the play. But she, in contrast, thinks he ought to have been born into an earlier time. Jimmy, on the other hand, already has the feeling that his youth is slipping away

Seen today, Look Back in Anger seems more long-winded and less radical than its reputation suggests. More than ever prone to be a one-man show, the irony is that the more charismatic the lead actor, the more unbalanced the play. Another irony is that having successfully changed public taste, Osborne's Jimmy is today more than ever likely to appear self-indulgent and melodramatic. In a note to his Dejavu, written in 1991, Osborne complained that incarnations of Jimmy were dull. What he expected was someone comic paired with melancholy.