The “angry young man” has not aged so well. At least, not John Osborne’s pugilistic sweet-stall seller in Look Back in Anger (★★☆☆☆). Having erupted on to the stage in 1956, he looks like a charmless, self-pitying tyrant here who weaponises his working-class chip against his wife.
Director Atri Banerjee leans into the version of Jimmy Porter (Billy Howle) as coercive controller and while it is an instinctive interpretation for our day, forensically rendered, it butts up against the play’s shining legacy as a cri de coeur of class consciousness.
