ANGRY's Young Cast Looks Good

The scene: a squalid apartment. The cast: a restless, repulsive twenty-something and his friend and lovers. The mood: boiling over with directionless anger and intellectual energy, yet surprisingly static. What is this? "Reality Bites"? "The Real World"?

Actually, it's John Osbourne's psychological drams Look Back in Anger, written way back in 1956 in England and first performed in 1957. The play centers around Jimmy Porter, an angst-ridden working-class college grad who makes a living running a "sweet stand"; the themes Look Back in Anger explores are wonderfully applicable to today's "Generation X" non-movement.

Director Angels Delichatsios stays true to the playwright's original time period and location without denying the modern-day American implications inherent in the piece. For instance, Jimmy (James McPartland) and Cliff (David Marmor) slouch front and center in easy chairs for most of the performance like Beavis and Butthead precursors, flipping through newspapers as if they were television channels.

Jimmy is an intolerably boorish young man. His rear planted firmly in his easy chair, he spouts ironically muscular, violent language, insulting everyone and everything he can. McPartland's looks--his long hair and sideburns, unathletic body, and snide, lazy expression--are well suited to the role. But the actor's line delivery is bogged down by Jimmy's endless, easy-chair-bound monologues: McPartland rushes his lines and slips into droning recitation. This problem fades as the play progresses; as Jimmy's interactions with other characters increase, McPartland's performance shows more and more energy.

Most of Jimmy's unpleasantness is directed into torturing his well-bred wife Alison (Silje Nnand). Alison's beauty, grace and propriety are frustratingly unattainable to her husband, and she exacerbates the situation by ignoring his rantings. Normand masters a frenetic nervous tension that shows itself in everything she does, from a palsied hand to a tremulous voice. She portrays Alison's silent suffering exquisitely. As she stands at an ironing board in the opening scene, we are captivated by her penetrating eyes and intense concentration on her work. In her frightened, innocent loveliness, Normand's Alison truly is, as Jimmy puts it, "a beautiful squirrel." Her shiny long hair even "glistens" like a "sleek, bushy tail."

Jimmy's counterpart Cliff is a stoic, but Marmor takes this impertubability too far. Cliff may be a "noman's land" between Jimmy and Alison, but he is also clever, and Marmor sometimes allows humorous lines to go by without giving them the wit they deserve.

Catherine Robe expertly plays Helena, a friend of Alison's who comes to stay and breaks up the group's dynamic, eventually seducing Jimmy. Robe emphasizes the subtle acidity of her lines, painting Helena as a cold, blunt, curt, savvy and slightly conniving woman. But Robe is also attentive to Helena's sense of moral obligation, rendering Helena's complexities exciting to watch.

A minor inconsistency that can be distracting to the audience is the use of English accents. For the first part of the play, McPartland and Marmor do not speak like Brits while Normand does. This is tolerable. Normand's accent suggests Alison's privileged upbringing, and the fact that Robe (as someone from a similar background) also speaks with a slight accent supports this. But the two women are unable to sustain their accents throughout, and the arrival of Alison's American-sounding father (Will Slaughter) on the scene confuses things to no end.

The unchanging set for Look Back in Anger is a bare and squalid apartment, and designer Zach Sung utilizes his space will. He manages to convey a sense of depressing poverty yet entertain the eye. Angry news headlines pasted over the bed (such as "Trust No One" and "Expect To Be Disappointed") and ashtrays full of cigarette butts make the place look lived-in, while a perfectly dreadful late "50s color scheme renders the ugly interpersonal relations in the play all the uglier. And little touches like vinyl-covered kitchen chairs and a screen behind which Jimmy can be seen playing the trumpet in a blue light give the set professional polish. Ed Rosenberg does an admirable job with light and sound in these trumpet-playing scenes, but he would be well-advised to do more, as the boring scene transitions could use some music.

The costumes, by Bill Winborn, who is a Crimson arts editor, also deserve recognition. Jimmy describes Alison's father Colonel Redfern as "one of those sturdy old plants left over from the Edwardian wilderness that can't understand why the sun isn't shining anymore." When Slaughter strides on stage in Redfern's proper Burberry-ish getup, we see that Jimmy could't be more accurate. And Redfern's grab, impeccable down to the polished black shoes, makes Alison, Jimmy, and Cliff's miserable fallen hems and moth-holes all the more noticeable.

Delichatsios has done a great job with Look Back in Anger. Scripts like this, with few characters and no scene changes, can be insufferable tedious even in professional performances. It also doesn't help that the Winthrop House JCR is far from an excellent theatrical space. However, Delichatsions' choreography, from boyish brawls to a song-and-dance comic routine, juxtaposes energy upon indolence in an effective reflection of the themes in the dialogue. And the talented members of Anger's cast give some shine to this diamond in the rough.

Jimmy's counterpart Cliff is a stoic, but Marmor takes this impertubability too far. Cliff may be a "noman's land" between Jimmy and Alison, but he is also clever, and Marmor sometimes allows humorous lines to go by without giving them the wit they deserve.

Catherine Robe expertly plays Helena, a friend of Alison's who comes to stay and breaks up the group's dynamic, eventually seducing Jimmy. Robe emphasizes the subtle acidity of her lines, painting Helena as a cold, blunt, curt, savvy and slightly conniving woman. But Robe is also attentive to Helena's sense of moral obligation, rendering Helena's complexities exciting to watch.

A minor inconsistency that can be distracting to the audience is the use of English accents. For the first part of the play, McPartland and Marmor do not speak like Brits while Normand does. This is tolerable. Normand's accent suggests Alison's privileged upbringing, and the fact that Robe (as someone from a similar background) also speaks with a slight accent supports this. But the two women are unable to sustain their accents throughout, and the arrival of Alison's American-sounding father (Will Slaughter) on the scene confuses things to no end.

The unchanging set for Look Back in Anger is a bare and squalid apartment, and designer Zach Sung utilizes his space will. He manages to convey a sense of depressing poverty yet entertain the eye. Angry news headlines pasted over the bed (such as "Trust No One" and "Expect To Be Disappointed") and ashtrays full of cigarette butts make the place look lived-in, while a perfectly dreadful late "50s color scheme renders the ugly interpersonal relations in the play all the uglier. And little touches like vinyl-covered kitchen chairs and a screen behind which Jimmy can be seen playing the trumpet in a blue light give the set professional polish. Ed Rosenberg does an admirable job with light and sound in these trumpet-playing scenes, but he would be well-advised to do more, as the boring scene transitions could use some music.

The costumes, by Bill Winborn, who is a Crimson arts editor, also deserve recognition. Jimmy describes Alison's father Colonel Redfern as "one of those sturdy old plants left over from the Edwardian wilderness that can't understand why the sun isn't shining anymore." When Slaughter strides on stage in Redfern's proper Burberry-ish getup, we see that Jimmy could't be more accurate. And Redfern's grab, impeccable down to the polished black shoes, makes Alison, Jimmy, and Cliff's miserable fallen hems and moth-holes all the more noticeable.

Delichatsios has done a great job with Look Back in Anger. Scripts like this, with few characters and no scene changes, can be insufferable tedious even in professional performances. It also doesn't help that the Winthrop House JCR is far from an excellent theatrical space. However, Delichatsions' choreography, from boyish brawls to a song-and-dance comic routine, juxtaposes energy upon indolence in an effective reflection of the themes in the dialogue. And the talented members of Anger's cast give some shine to this diamond in the rough.