Oberon Modern Playwrights
3 total works
John Osborne (1929-1994) was the leading playwright of the post-war British theatre revival: a rennaissance that is said to have started when his Look Back in Anger was first performed at the Royal Court Theatre. It led to the coining of the phrase 'angry young man', which applied not only to Osborne but also to many new writers who criticised the system.
But Osborne was not a conventional revolutionary; his attack on the present was in fact a mourning for the loss of past values, a stance that became clearer in his later plays. The Blood of the Bambergs, the first of the two companion "Plays for England" (1963), is a satirical account of a royal wedding. The second play, Under Plain Cover depicts a marriage in crisis that becomes a tabloid 'human interest’ story. Watch it Come Down (1975) is the story of a man waiting for death, while his friends trash and scar each other around him.
But Osborne was not a conventional revolutionary; his attack on the present was in fact a mourning for the loss of past values, a stance that became clearer in his later plays. The Blood of the Bambergs, the first of the two companion "Plays for England" (1963), is a satirical account of a royal wedding. The second play, Under Plain Cover depicts a marriage in crisis that becomes a tabloid 'human interest’ story. Watch it Come Down (1975) is the story of a man waiting for death, while his friends trash and scar each other around him.
Includes the plays A Sense of Detachment, The End of Me Old Cigar, Jill and Jack and A Place Calling Itself Rome
Osborne here delivers his trademark eloquence, rage and devastating wit. A Sense of Detachment satirises our heartless, profiteering society, while defending timeless human values. The End of Me Old Cigar examines the decadent lives of a collection of leading media figures. The television play Jill and Jack is a comic gem that satirises the conventions of its own genre while also being a close study of sexual warfare.A Place Calling Itself Rome is a powerful reworking of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus.
Osborne here delivers his trademark eloquence, rage and devastating wit. A Sense of Detachment satirises our heartless, profiteering society, while defending timeless human values. The End of Me Old Cigar examines the decadent lives of a collection of leading media figures. The television play Jill and Jack is a comic gem that satirises the conventions of its own genre while also being a close study of sexual warfare.A Place Calling Itself Rome is a powerful reworking of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus.
The first performance of Look Back in Anger in 1956 ushered in a new period of British theatre, and its success established the previously unknown John Osborne as a new playwright of the first rank. Contrary to popular perception, Look Back was not Osborne's first play to be performed, and two of his early plays had already enjoyed professional productions. Copies of the scripts, thought to have been lost, were rediscovered in the British Library in 2008, and are presented for the first time here.
The Devil Inside Him (1950) was the 21 year-old Osborne's earliest attempt at a full-length play,and concerns a young Welshman, Huw, at odds with the hypocrisy and imaginative poverty of his community. It was re-written with help from Osborne's then-lover, Stella Linden.
Personal Enemy (1955) was written with Anthony Creighton with whom Osborne later collaborated with on Epitaph for George Dillon. Set in small-town America during summer of 1953 - at the height of the anti-communist witch-hunts - the play tells the story of a family torn apart by a country's political, and sexual, paranoia.
The Devil Inside Him (1950) was the 21 year-old Osborne's earliest attempt at a full-length play,and concerns a young Welshman, Huw, at odds with the hypocrisy and imaginative poverty of his community. It was re-written with help from Osborne's then-lover, Stella Linden.
Personal Enemy (1955) was written with Anthony Creighton with whom Osborne later collaborated with on Epitaph for George Dillon. Set in small-town America during summer of 1953 - at the height of the anti-communist witch-hunts - the play tells the story of a family torn apart by a country's political, and sexual, paranoia.