Research into the Play

Research in to the Play

First Look At the Cast of Characters
Jimmy Porter- Bastard, Horrible
> Married to Alison Porter
> Friends with Cliff Lewis
> Can be sensitive at times but will lose his temper quit quickly
> Upper working class

Cliff Lewis- Kind and sweet hearted
> Friends with Jimmy Porter
> Trying to keep Jimmy and Alison together
> Lives with Alison and Jimmy
> Loves Alison

Alison Porter- Genuinely a nice person
> Married to Jimmy Porter
> On the verge of breaking point
> Is pregnant
> Friends with Helena Charles


Helena Charles- Has guts to stand up for herself
> Friends with Alison
> Hates the idea that Alison and Jimmy are together and thinks what it is unsafe
> Passive aggressive
> An actress


The Play
Play write- John Osborne
First Performance-May 8th 1956
Look Back in Anger was the third play to be put on at the Royal Court Theatre as it was deemed 'safe' for the stage.


Themes of the scene we are doing:

• Regret- Helena is really regretting what has done as for the months that she has lived with Jimmy she has never ever been able to forget the fact that she has done that to her best friend. She has made her best friend feel so horrible and it is all her fault.
• Anger-Jimmy would be angry about what Helena is doing to him, she is trying to leave and is trying to move on and he doesn't want her to do that. 
• Hurt- Alison is feeling hurt as she is coming back to the man that used to hurt her and made her feel so low about herself for years and years and now she is finally feeling the full blow of it all.
• Remorse- Helena would have been feeling remorse because she has taken away her best friends husband and when she least expected it she found out that Alison had lost her first baby. She thought about how that would have effected Alison and what it would have done to her.

The Magic IF
The magic if is if you were in your characters position what would you do?
So when Helena is talking about when Alison had lost the baby.


Life in the 1950's


Money

As you can see by the picture above so much has changed in the past 60 years. Back in the 1950's people struggled alot for money as the weekly income was so low compared to the way that it is today. In the 1950's people were grateful for what they got and what they could afford, they were still in post world war 2 conditions and did whatever they could when they could, unlike the people of today who blow money left right and center on things that they don't actually need.


Angry Young Men Movement
"The "angry young men" were a group of mostly working and middle class British playwrights and novelists who became prominent in the 1950s. The group's leading members included John Osborne and Kingsley Amis. The phrase was originally coined by the Royal Court Theatre's press officer to promote John Osborne's 1956play Look Back in Anger. It is thought to be derived from the autobiography of Leslie Paul, founder of the Woodcraft Folk, whose Angry Young Man was published in 1951. Following the success of the Osborne play, the label was later applied by British media to describe young British writers who were characterised by a disillusionment with traditional English society. The term, always imprecise, began to have less meaning over the years as the writers to whom it was originally applied became more divergent, and many of them dismissed the label as useless."  Wikipedia explanation.

Kitchen Sink Realism 

'Kitchen sink realism (or kitchen sink drama) is a term coined to describe a British cultural movement that developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s in theatre,art, novels, film and television plays, whose 'heroes' usually could be described as angry young men. It used a style of social realism, which often depicted the domestic situations of working-class Britons living in cramped rented accommodation and spending their off-hours drinking in grimy pubs, to explore social issues and political controversies.

The films, plays and novels employing this style are set frequently in poorer industrial areas in the North of England, and use the rough-hewn speaking accents andslang heard in those regions. The film It Always Rains on Sunday (1947) is a precursor of the genre, and the John Osborne play Look Back in Anger (1956) is thought of as the first of the idiom.

The gritty love-triangle of Look Back in Anger, for example, takes place in a cramped, one-room flat in the English Midlands.' Wikipedia explaination