Look Back in Anger (eBook)

John Osborne (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2013 | 1. Auflage
96 Seiten
Faber & Faber (Verlag)
978-0-571-30087-7 (ISBN)

Infos

Anyone who's never watched someone die is suffering from a pretty bad case of virginity. Look Back in Anger premiered at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in 1956. 'John Osborne didn't contribute to British theatre: he set off a landmine called Look Back in Anger and blew most of it up.' Alan Sillitoe 'A story of youthful insecurity inflamed by lack of opportunity and the terrifying, destabilizing force of love . . . Jimmy Porter could fill an opera house with his bellowing hunger for a bigger, better life and a loyal love to share it with.' New York Times 'Look Back in Anger presents post-war youth as it really is. To have done this at all would be a signal achievement; to have done it in a first play is a minor miracle. All the qualities are there, qualities one had despaired of ever seeing on the stage - the drift towards anarchy, the instinctive leftishness, the automatic rejection of 'official' attitudes, the surrealist sense of humour, the casual promiscuity, the sense of lacking a crusade worth fighting for and, underlying all these, the determination that no one who dies shall go unmourned . . . I doubt if I could love anyone who did not wish to see Look Back in Anger. It is the best young play of its decade.' Kenneth Tynan, Observer 'How bracing, and, yes, even shocking, its white-hot fury remains.' The Times This edition includes an introduction by Michael Billington and an afterword by David Hare.

John Osborne was born in London in 1929. Before becoming a playwright he worked as a journalist, assistant stage manager and repertory theatre actor. Seeing an advertisement for new plays in The Stage in 1956, Osborne submitted Look Back in Anger. Not only was the play produced, but it was to become considered as the turning point in post-war British theatre. Osborne's protagonist, Jimmy Porter, captured the rebelliousness of an entire post-war generation of 'angry young men'. His other plays include The Entertainer (1957), Luther (1961), Inadmissible Evidence (1964), and A Patriot for Me (1966). He also wrote two volumes of autobiography, A Better Class of Person (1981) and Almost a Gentleman (1991) published together as Looking Back: Never Explain, Never Apologise. His last play, Deja Vu (1991), returns to the characters of Look Back in Anger, over thirty years later. Both Look Back in Anger and The Entertainer were adapted for film, and in 1963 Osborne won an Academy Award for his screenplay for Tom Jones. John Osborne died on 24 December 1994.

Autor

John Osborne was born in London in 1929. Before becoming a playwright he worked as a journalist, assistant stage manager and repertory theatre actor. Seeing an advertisement for new plays in The Stage in 1956, Osborne submitted Look Back in Anger. Not only was the play produced, but it was to become considered as the turning point in post-war British theatre. His other plays include The Entertainer (1957), Luther (1961), Inadmissible Evidence(1964), and A Patriot for Me (1966). He also wrote two volumes of autobiography, A Better Class of Person (1981) and Almost a Gentleman (1991) published together as Looking Back: Never Explain, Never Apologise. His last play, Deja Vu (1991), returns to the characters of Look Back in Anger, over thirty years later. Both Look Back in Anger and The Entertainer were adapted for film, and in 1963 Osborne won an Academy Award for his screenplay for Tom Jones. John Osborne died on 24 December 1994.

Textauszug

Act I

The Porters’ one-room flat in a large Midland town. Early evening. April.

The scene is a fairly large attic room, at the top of a large Victorian house. The ceiling slopes down quite sharply from L to R. Down R are two small low windows. In front of these is a dark oak dressing table. Most of the furniture is simple, and rather old. Up R is a double bed, running the length of most of the back wall, the rest of which is taken up with a shelf of books. Down R below the bed is a heavy chest of drawers, covered with books, neckties and odds and ends, including a large, tattered toy teddy bear and soft, woolly squirrel. Up L is a door. Below this a small wardrobe. Most of the wall L is taken up with a high, oblong window. This looks out on to the landing, but light comes through it from a skylight beyond. Below the wardrobe is a gas stove, and, beside this, a wooden food cupboard, on which is a small, portable radio. Down C is a sturdy dining table and three chairs, and, below this, L and R, two deep, shabby leather armchairs.

At rise of curtain, Jimmy and Cliff are seated in the two armchairs R and L, respectively. All that we can see of either of them is two pairs of legs, sprawled way out beyond the newspapers which hide the rest of them from sight. They are both reading. Beside them, and between them, is a jungle of newspapers and weeklies. When we do eventually see them, we find that Jimmy is a tall, thin young man about twenty-five, wearing a very worn tweed jacket and flannels. Clouds of smoke fill the room from the pipe he is smoking. He is a disconcerting mixture of sincerity and cheerful malice, of tenderness and freebooting cruelty; restless, importunate, full of pride, a combination which alienates the sensitive and insensitive alike. Blistering honesty, or apparent honesty, like his, makes few friends. To many he may seem sensitive to the point of vulgarity. To others, he is simply a loudmouth. To be as vehement as he is is to be almost non-committal. Cliff is the same age, short, dark, big boned, wearing a pullover and grey, new, but very creased trousers. He is easy and relaxed, almost to lethargy, with the rather sad, natural intelligence of the self-taught. If Jimmy alienates love, Cliff seems to exact it – demonstrations of it, at least, even from the cautious. He is a soothing, natural counterpoint to Jimmy.

Standing L, below the food cupboard, is Alison. She is leaning over an ironing board. Beside her is a pile of clothes. Hers is the most elusive personality to catch in the uneasy polyphony of these three people. She is turned in a different key, a key of well-bred malaise that is often drowned in the robust orchestration of the other two. Hanging over the grubby, but expensive, skirt she is wearing is a cherry red shirt of Jimmy’s, but she manages somehow to look quite elegant in it. She is roughly the same age as the men. Somehow, their combined physical oddity makes her beauty more striking than it really is. She is tall, slim, dark. The bones of her face are long and delicate. There is a surprising reservation about her eyes, which are so large and deep they should make equivocation impossible. The room is still, smoke-filled. The only sound is the occasional thud of Alison’s iron on the board. It is one of those chilly spring evenings, all cloud and shadows. Presently, Jimmy throws his paper down.

Jimmy Why do I do this every Sunday? Even the book reviews seem to be the same as last week’s. Different books – same reviews. Have you finished that one yet?

Cliff Not yet.

Jimmy I’ve just read three whole columns on the English Novel. Half of it’s in French. Do the Sunday papers make you feel ignorant?

Cliff Not ’arf.

Jimmy Well, you are ignorant. You’re just a peasant. (to Alison) What about you? You’re not a peasant are you?

Alison (absently) What’s that?

Jimmy I said do the papers make you feel you’re not so brilliant after all?

Alison Oh – I haven’t read them yet.

Jimmy I didn’t ask you that. I said –

Cliff Leave the poor girlie alone. She’s busy.

Jimmy Well, she can talk, can’t she? You can talk, can’t you? You can express an opinion. Or does the White Woman’s Burden make it impossible to think?

Alison I’m sorry. I wasn’t listening properly.

Jimmy You bet you weren’t listening. Old Porter talks, and everyone turns over and goes to sleep. And Mrs Porter gets ’em all going with the first yawn.

Cliff Leave her alone, I said.

Jimmy (shouting) All right, dear. Go back to sleep. It was only me talking. You know? Talking? Remember? I’m sorry.

Cliff Stop yelling. I’m trying to read.

Jimmy Why do you bother? You can’t understand a word of it.

Cliff Uh huh.

Jimmy You’re too ignorant.

Cliff Yes, and uneducated. Now shut up, will you?

Jimmy Why don’t you get my wife to explain it to you? She’s educated. (to her) That’s right, isn’t it?

Cliff (kicking out at him from behind his paper) Leave her alone, I said.

Jimmy Do that again, you Welsh ruffian, and I’ll pull your ears off.

He bangs Cliff’s paper out of his hands.

Cliff (leaning forward) Listen – I’m trying to better myself. Let me get on with it, you big, horrible man. Give it me. (Puts his hand out for paper.)

Alison Oh, give it to him, Jimmy, for heaven’s sake! I can’t think!

Cliff Yes, come on, give me the paper. She can’t think.

Jimmy Can’t think! (Throws the paper back at him.) She hasn’t had a thought for years! Have you?

Alison No.

Jimmy (picks up a weekly) I’m getting hungry.

Alison Oh no, not already!

Cliff He’s a bloody pig.

Jimmy I’m not a pig. I just like food – that’s all.

Cliff Like it! You’re like a sexual maniac – only with you it’s food. You’ll end up in the News of the World, boyo, you wait. James Porter, aged twenty-five, was bound over last week after pleading guilty to interfering with a small cabbage and two tins of beans on his way home from the Builder’s Arms. The accused said he hadn’t been feeling well for some time, and had been having black-outs. He asked for his good record as an air-raid warden, second class, to be taken into account.

Jimmy (grins) Oh, yes, yes, yes. I like to eat. I’d like to live too. Do you mind?

Cliff Don’t see any use in your eating at all. You never get any fatter.

Jimmy People like me don’t get fat. I’ve tried to tell you before. We just burn everything up. Now shut up while I read. You can make me some more tea.

Cliff Good God, you’ve just had a great potful! I only had one cup.

Jimmy Like hell! Make some more.

Cliff (to Alison) Isn’t that right? Didn’t I only have one cup?

Alison (without looking up) That’s right.

Cliff There you are. And she only had one cup too. I saw her. You guzzled the lot.

Jimmy (reading his weekly) Put the kettle on.

Cliff Put it on yourself. You’ve creased up my paper.

Jimmy I’m the only one who knows how to treat a paper, or anything else, in this house. (Picks up another paper.) Girl here wants to know whether her boy friend will lose all respect for her if she gives him what he asks for. Stupid...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 21.3.2013
• Verlagsort: London
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Lyrik / Dramatik ► Dramatik / Theater
• Themenwelt: Kunst / Musik / Theater ► Kunstgeschichte / Kunststile
• Themenwelt: Kunst / Musik / Theater ► Theater / Ballett
• Themenwelt: Schulbuch / Wörterbuch
• Themenwelt: Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Kulturgeschichte
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Anglistik / Amerikanistik
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturwissenschaft
• Schlagworte: angry young men • John Osborne • Look back in anger • Lucky Jim • The Birthday Party • The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie • Waiting for Godot
• ISBN-10: 0-571-30087-1 / 0571300871
• ISBN-13: 978-0-571-30087-7 / 9780571300877