Review - Look Back in Anger

I bought an inexpensive TDF ticket to the new Off-Broadway revival of John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger last night.  I’d never seen the play staged, and had probably read it last about twenty years ago, so I was really looking forward to seeing it.  Unfortunately, though, I’m the only one looking back in anger.  I didn’t enjoy myself in the extreme.  But I’m only looking back at the first act, because I couldn’t take it and I left at intermission.

You all know how I hate leaving at intermission (I went back and looked at my old reviews and noticed I haven’t left a show for quite a while, thankfully) – I can generally find something of value to get me to stay.  A good-looking performer, a wish to see how a scene turns out, a realization that things could get better in the second act.  But, sadly, I just couldn’t find anything on that stage that enticed me to see how the whole thing played out.  Well, I can’t actually use the term “on that stage” here.  Perhaps “on that apron” would be more precise. 

If the director decided to only use the apron of the stage to increase the claustrophobia of these characters’ lives, it didn’t work for me.  It just made everything awkward and stagey and dumb.  When actors had to exit the room to go ‘upstairs’ or ‘downstairs,’ they sat on the steps at the side of the stage and waited for their next entrance.  Or leaned against the hand railing on the far side of the audience.  That didn’t work for me at all.  And sitting on the edge of the apron with their legs dangling off the stage?  Didn’t work for me either.

None of the acting worked for me, either.  The guy playing Jimmy Porter was just bad wrong.  It was as if he had chosen to do scenework for a beginning acting class, and had come in with every gesture, every inflection chosen in advance, regardless of what the other actors would give him.  So everything was mechanical and false.  And there wasn’t any ‘anger’ here, no high stakes.  Just some yelling, and some sarcastic nonsense.  I did not buy one minute of his interpretation.  The gal playing his wife was shrill and false as well, though I suppose you could say it’s a valid character choice for her, but I still disliked her a lot.  They had no chemistry, and without these two having chemistry, the whole plot of the play falls apart.  The other two actors in the first act made little to no impression on me because I was hating on the leads so much.

I will also admit to being completely distracted by the garbage on the set and the possibility of cockroaches everywhere.  There were many bits of food laying around, along with a whole head of lettuce, which I believe they then made into a salad which everyone ate (do people really eat salad at tea time?  and would these people really eat fresh vegetables?).  SOOOOO distracting to me.  All I could do was worry about cockroaches and food poisoning.  And bad acting.

It’s probably mean to be so harsh on a show in previews, and one in which I only saw the first act.  AND I suppose part of the problem was that I was exhausted and can feel a cold coming on, so I had NO patience for bad acting and bad directing (and possible cockroaches).  But it just made me so mad that this play, which could be so relevant to today, with young people simmering with pain and rage and discontent but unable to make a connection, was put together so poorly.  In my opinion, of course.  I fully expect this to get raves and run forever.  Though the gents next to me walked out with me, saying “this guy is just BAD.”  Great minds and all that, but, in the interest of full disclosure, much of the audience seemed to be enjoying themselves…

I need to see something else, stat.  To get the crabbiness out of my brain.  I wish I could see Follies again.  Sigh.  I’ll probably look at TDF again next week, since I don’t have a show officially scheduled until the end of February, when I see Albee’s Lady from Dubuque.  UPDATE:  I've been reminded that I'll be seeing the Encores production of Merrily We Roll Along in early February.  So Sondheim WILL save me.  Probably.  :)