Look Back in Anger

“Most of the time this place is hell, a narrow, fiery hell.”

This is what Cliff, one of the characters in the drama, says when he talks about his life with Jimmy and Alison. Three young people, seemingly in full force, with their whole lives ahead of them,
yet instead of a hopeful future, the hellish present is shown in John Osborne’s drama.
To what extent are we responsible for others? How do our unprocessed traumas affect our
relationships? What sacrifices are we willing to make for the ones we love? How far can we point our difficulties at the older generation?

These are some of the questions Osborne explores in Look Back in Anger (The Angry Youth), and even though the drama takes place in England in the 1950s, in the early years of the Cold War, you can always feel that the problems raised in the text have not been solved or replaced, but have become even more topical.