EVERYTHING INCLUDING THE KITCHEN SINK

Gabriella Józwiakcelebrates 50 years of John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger ´

Remarkably, during the first performances of Look Back in Anger audiences are said to have gasped with surprise when the curtain rose and revealed an ironing board on stage. Used to melodrama and safe, middle class comedies, which concealed the dissatisfaction of a post-war generation with scenes of affluent contentment, such a wearisome article was considered a radical impostor. But John Osborne’s play spoke for the ‘angry young men’ of the day, and revolutionised British theatre. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the play’s first performance on 8 May 1956, at the Royal Court Theatre in London. It is surprising that Osborne’s play was ever accepted for performance. Agents from over London rejected it immediately, one declaring, “It should be thrown into the river and washed out to sea so that it may never be seen again.” But George Devine, artistic director of the newly-formed English Stage Company at London’s Royal Court Theatre, decided to take a risk. At the time, Osborne was living in a leaky houseboat on the River Thames. So keen was Devine to contact Osborne, he rowed out to offer him £25 for the play. English stages of the 1950s were occupied with plays illustrating the comfort of post-war existence. Noel Coward and Terrence Rattigan, amongst others, dominated the West End with their tales of affluent bourgeoisie thriving in their country homes, or members of the upper middle classes in comfortable suburbia. But Osborne wanted to show the discontentment of a generation who had exchanged passion for bland materialism. The shabby attic room in a Midlands town where the play is set provoked bad feelings about the state of England, the war-time

generation, and conventional drama. Early audiences left the theatre before the play was finished. It received condemnatory reviews from all critics, except for Kenneth Tynan of the Observer. “Look Back in Angerpresents postwar youth as it really is,” he wrote. “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” (13 May 1956). Without Tynan and the agreement of the BBC to screen a 25-minute extract, the play would surely have failed. But as audience numbers grew, so too did Osborne’s fame. By the time of his death in 1994, Osborne had staged 21 plays and married a further three wives, one of whom committed suicide. ‘Angry young men’ was a phrase one journalist used to describe Osborne and the subsequent playwrights Look Back in Anger inspired. Harold Pinter, John Braine, and Alan Sillitoe continued this Kitchen Sink genre of drama, as such plays came to be known. Writing in the Independent at the time of Osborne’s death, Arnold Wesker described Osborne as having ‘opened the doors of theatres for all the succeeding generations of writers’. Look Back in Anger altered British theatre immeasurably, but since the 1950s, there have been few major revivals. In a recent Guardianarticle, Mark Lawson suggests this is because the play loses impact when performed in today’s class-conscious society. But this summer, in commemoration of its 50th anniversary, the Peter Hall Company is staging a performance at the Theatre Royal Bath (16 August-2 September). On 8 May, exactly 50

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John Osborne

Still looking back: Osborne’s revolutionary classic has shocked in print, on stage, on radio and on screen

years to the day of its first performance, the Royal Court Theatre presented a Tribute to Look Back in Anger. Radio Four also broadcast a shortened version to mark the 50th anniversary of the English Stage Company. The true first edition of the play was published by Evans Brothers Ltd in September 1957. A good quality copy of this fragile paperbound book can be worth over £280/$500. Bernard Quaritch currently have a particularly fine copy available for £284/$506, with the publisher’s stamp concerning amateur production on page 6, and dated in pencil: 27/9/57. Later in 1957, Faber and Faber published an edition that is more easily found. Hardback copies can reach up to £98/$175 with a laid-in Royal Court

Theatre programme. ManOfBooks.com has a third impression copy for sale for £98/$175 in which Kenneth Haigh has been replaced by Richard Pasco and Mary Ure by Wendy Williams in the programme. Alonquin Books are selling another of the Faber editions for £300/$534. Their copy contains a postcard showing a painting of the author, which is signed with the addition ‘very best wishes’. There are, however, also numerous copies of further impressions done in 1957 that go for a meager £4.50/$8. Osborne’s personal papers and editions survive in several collections. Following a donation by Irwin T Holtzman, the British Library has a self-contained archive, comprising many fine copies of first editions, complete with dust wrappers (not normally retained with the book by the Library), as well as uncorrected proof copies. Promotional material associated with Osborne’s films, as well as theatre programmes are also included, as are a small number of letters, and a working typescript of the early play Personal Enemy (1955) with the deletions of the then national censor, the Lord Chamberlain. Look Back in Anger is represented by a first edition, an uncorrected proof dated 1956, various American editions, a 1961 novelisation and a number of promotional texts associated with the film version. The Harry Ransom Research Center at Texas University houses two important collections. The collection of literary agent Gordon Dickerson includes three boxes of Osbornerelated material (Tom Stoppard merits 13). As well as contracts and correspondence between Osborn and the PFD agency, the collection includes scripts for The World of Paul Slickey(two uncorrected typescripts, top copy) and the corrected carbon typescript of the teleplay You’re Not Watching Me, Mummy. This collection complements the 58-box Osborn Papers collection, also at the Ransom Center, a 58-box array of holograph manuscripts and notebooks, typescripts, page and galley proofs, correspondence, newspaper and magazine articles, scrapbooks, posters, programmes and business documents. Look Back in Anger appears in seventh draft, screenplay form (20 August 1958, copy no 15); photocopy page proofs; and holography manuscript and corrected typescripts. Among other treasures are a rehearsal script for Almost a Vision, Osborne’s corrected bound copy, with holograph notes, of Déjà Vuand both tape and notebook transcriptions for the book A Better Class of Person. R

BUYING & SELLING JOHN OSBORNE (b 1929 d 1994)

Note:reprints under different titles do not necessarily mean that the same text is reproduced:one work is often a progression of another. Where two prices are given,the first is with dustwrapper;the second without.

Plays Look Back in Anger, Evans (London), 1957 (wraps) £30 ditto, Faber (London), 1957 £100/£15 ditto, Criterion (New York), 1957 £40/£10 The Entertainer, Faber (London), 1957 £50/£10 ditto, Criterion (New York), 1958 £35/£5 Epitaph for George Dillon, Faber (London), 1958 (with Anthony Creighton) £25/£10 ditto, Criterion (New York), 1958 £15/£5 The World of Paul Slickey, Faber (London), 1959 £25/£10 ditto, Criterion (New York), 1961 £15/£5 A Subject of Scandal and Concern: A Play for Television, Faber (London), 1961 £35/£15 Luther, Faber (London), 1961 £25/£10 ditto, Dramatic Publishing Co. (Chicago), 1961 £15/£5 Plays for England, Faber (London), 1963 £25/£10 ditto, Criterion (New York), 1964 £15/£5 Inadmissible Evidence, Faber (London), 1965 £25/£10 ditto, Grove Press (New York), 1965 £15/£5 A Patriot for Me, Faber (London), 1966 £25/£10 ditto, Random House (New York), 1970 £15/£5 Time Present and Hotel in Amsterdam, Faber (London), 1968 £20/£5 The Right Prospectus: A Play for Television, Faber (London), 1970 £15/£5 Very Like a Whale, Faber (London), 1971 £15/£5 West of Suez, Faber (London), 1971 £15/£5 The Gift of Friendship, Faber (London), 1972 £15/£5 A Sense of Detachment, Faber (London), 1973 £15/£5 The End of Me Old Cigar, a play, and Jill and Jack, a play for television, Faber (London), 1975 £15/£5 Watch It Come Down, Faber (London), 1975 £15/£5 You’re Not Watching Me, Mummy, and Try a Little Tenderness, Faber (London), 1978 £15/£5 A Better Class of Person and God Rot Tunbridge Wells, Faber (London), 1985 £15/£5 Dejavu, Faber (London), 1992 £10/£5

Autobiography A Better Class of Person: An Autobiography 1929-1956, Faber (London), 1981 £20/£5 ditto, Dutton (New York), 1981 £15/£5 Almost a Gentleman: An Autobiography, Vol II, 1955-1966, Faber (London), 1991 £15/£5

Translations/Adaptations A Bond Honoured, Faber (London), 1966 (from Lope de Vega’s La Fianza Satisfecha) £20/£5 Hedda Gabler, Faber (London), 1972 (Ibsen) £15/£5 The Picture of Dorian Gray: A Moral Entertainment, Faber (London), 1973 (Oscar Wilde) £15/£5 A Place Calling Itself Rome, Faber (London), 1973 (based on Shakespeare’s Coriolanus) £15/£5 Strindberg’s ‘The Father’and Ibsen’s ‘Hedda Gabler’, Faber (London), 1989 £10/£5

Others Look Back in Anger, Four Square Books(London), 1960 (novelisation by John Burke, wraps) £5 The Entertainer, Four Square Books (London), 1960 (novelisation by John Burke, wraps) £5 Tom Jones: A Film Script, Faber (London), 1964 £20/£5 ditto, Grove Press (New York), 1964 £10/£5 Damn You, England: Collected Prose, Faber (London), 1994 £15/£5 ditto, Faber (New York), 1994 £10/£5

Information taken from The Tartarus Press Guide to First Edition Prices 2006/7. For the full bibliography order your copy from Tartarus Press, Coverley House, Carlton, Leyburn, North Yorkshire DL8 4AY, United Kingdom. Telephone/Fax: +44 (0)1969 640399 £19.95.

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