Look Back in Anger

LOOK BACK IN ANGER BY JOHN OSBORNE Play in Three Acts

CAST In Order of Appearance JIMMY PORTER CLIFF LEWIS ALISON PORTER HELENA CHARLES COLONEL REDFERN CONTENTS The action throughout takes place in the Porters' one-room, flat in the Midlands TIME: The present. ACT I

ACT II Scene l. Scene 2. ACT III Scene 1. Scene 2. 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. Several months later. A few minutes later. Two weeks later. The following evening.

1

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...