Write an essay on the Angry Theatre
of the 1950s in Britain with special reference to Look Back in Anger.
In the late 1950s a
number of young writers, among whom we can mention A. Wesker,
Kinsley Amis and above all John Osborne, had an
immense success in Britain. They were grouped under the label of “Angry
Young Men”. They gave voice to the young generation who, dissatisfied
with the world they lived in, wanted to create their own way of living. They
struggled against the Establishment and some of its values: family, patriotism,
the Established Church and culture. They began to cry out against conventions,
tradition and authoritarianism. They felt cheated as the promises of the
Welfare State had revealed to be empty: society fed them well, educated them
well, but still kept them trapped in a class system that opened the doors to
the rich public school members of the upper-middle class and kept them closed
in the faces of the members of the working class.
Jimmy
Porter, the main character of Osborne’s play “Look Back in
Anger”, became a model to be imitated for the British young generation
of the late 1950s. Jimmy spoke the raw language of a frustrated generation, the
language spoken by real people in the streets and not the sophisticated one
used by the upper classes.
