About the work
Blick zurück im Zorn ('Look Back in Anger') is a three-act play by John Osborne, first performed on 8 May 1956 at the Royal Court Theatre in London as the third production of the newly formed English Stage Company, directed by Tony Richardson.
Plot
In a cramped attic flat in the English Midlands, the educated but directionless Jimmy Porter lives with his middle-class wife Alison and his friend Cliff. Jimmy rails in constant tirades against society's complacency; when Alison's friend Helena arrives and Alison becomes pregnant and loses the child, the marriage nearly collapses before the couple tentatively reconcile through shared suffering.
Cultural significance
The play gave post-war British youth its first direct voice on stage and made Osborne the first of the writers known as the 'Angry Young Men'; it won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award and was filmed by Tony Richardson in 1959 with Richard Burton.