A new revival by Derby Theatre and Octagon Theatre Bolton will mark the 60th anniversary of John Osborne’s ground-breaking work Look Back in Anger.
Osborne worked as an actor and stage manager at Derby Playhouse a year before he wrote this seminal piece. He set the play in a large East Midlands town and his autobiography suggests some alarming similarities with his own life.
Look Back in Anger changed the face of British theatre in the mid-1950s by putting on stage the voice of the “angry young man”. The play is said to be based on Osborne's unhappy marriage to actress Pamela Lane. They lived in a cramped flat in Derby at the time.
Osborne pitched the play to Derby Playhouse but it was turned down. He then offered it to the Royal Court where it had its première in 1956.
Patrick Knowles takes the role of Jimmy Porter. He appeared as Mitch in Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire at Leicester’s Curve in October 2015 and played Arthur in Amanda Whittington’s adaptation of Alan Sillitoe’s Saturday Night and Sunday Morning at the Mercury Theatre Colchester in May 2014.
Augustina Seymour will play Alison. Her work includes Arthur Miller’s Playing for Time at the Crucible Theatre, Sheffield in March 2015.
Daisy Badger—Pip Archer in the BBC Radio 4 series The Archers and Claire Hillman in the ITV series Home Fires—takes the role of Helena.
Jimmy Fairhurst is Cliff. He played Phil in Derby Theatre’s production of Brassed Off in September 2015 and Jud in the theatre’s revival of Kes by Barry Hines in 2013.
Look Back in Anger will be designed by Neil Irish. Lighting design is by Arnim Friess and music is composed by Ivan Stott.
The play runs at Derby Theatre from Friday 4 until Saturday 26 March. It then transfers to Octagon Theatre Bolton from Tuesday 7 until Saturday 30 April.
As a companion piece, Derby Theatre will also present a new play, Jinny, written by Derbyshire playwright Jane Wainwright. It is a “humorous and poignant response piece to Osborne’s classic and has been built on research and development with women living in Derby today”.
Jinny which features Joanna Simpkins runs at Derby Theatre from Monday 7 March until Wednesday 23 March.