Lie Back In Anger

Holed up in a dingy Isle of Dogs flat, it's through the angry young eyes of a Jenny, not Jimmy, Porter that we see contemporary British society and all its failings, but this time round it's gender politics, not class that take centre stage.

Lie Back in Anger follows Jenny and her upper middle class husband, Jim, as they struggle with what life throws at them, and on the whole it follows the same basic plot as the Osborne classic; pregnancy, cuckolding, miscarriage, abandonment, with some sexual violence thrown in for good measure.

Although Jenny is disillusioned with her lot, stuck in a dead end job, after dropping out of uni because she couldn't afford the fees, it's hard to empathise with her stifling circumstances or praise her for spirited feminism and fighting spirit, because she is just so good damn annoying. She's an egoist, who loves the sound of her own vitriol and is constantly humoured by her husband and placated by her long suffering best friend, Kirsten, played by Natasha Magihi.

Thanks to the nature of Jenny's tirades, watching this production is a knackering experience. You get pretty sick, pretty quickly, of Jenny's mouthing-off and failure to follow it up with anything more meaningful than a dance-off with her best mate. And two thirds of the way through the production, I just wanted to shove her in a sound proof box and pray to God she ran out of oxygen.

It's not just her capacity to act up rather than take action that is so frustrating; it is the nature of her arguments. Her diatribes are the kind of polemics that well versed broadsheet columnist, love to revel in, talking from the head not the heart and displaying their education and superiority like a peacock's plumage.

So rather than a gobby chav, or just your average young women trying to deal with and find her place in this mad, bad, sad world, you are shut in a room with this woman, who seems to be merely a mouth piece for O' Donnell's, very eloquent cultural critiques. Jenny Hurren, plays her namesake with great passion, but her mania, and the relentless nature of her verbal assaults mean that watching her is akin to waiting for a hyper active child to tire itself out.

Alastair Kirton, is utterly believable as her confused, docile husband, Jim who scampers off home to mummy when Jenny gets a little too crazy. Jim's mother Arrabella, is played exquisitely by Pearl Marsland as a walking Home counties stereotype.

Amidst this undomesticated bliss, there is also Jim's best mate, Rufus - think Hugh Grant meets Simon Cowell and you get an insight into the nature of this spiteful toff, played by an excellent Theo Herman. Vile and priapic, Rufus rapes his mate's wife, capturing the action on his camera phone, and by doing so he demeans, degrades and ultimately breaks her.

Look Back in Anger, was so incendiary that Allan Sillitoe once said of Osborne that he "didn't contribute to British theatre, he set off a landmine and blew most of it up." O'Donnell, is far from creating similar reverberations with this production. Because stand in any queue, sit in any bar and there are twenty-something women all over this country venting their dreams and frustrations, but with less histrionics and verbosity.

share Tweet