Don't Look Back in Anger... Or Do! Wider Reading (Drama) 6: Look Back in Anger.

Look back in anger presents post-war youth as it really is. All the qualities are there - the drift towards anarchy, the instinctive leftishness, the automatic rejection of "official" attitudes, the surrealist sense of humour... the casual promiscuity, the sense of lacking a crusade worth fighting for and, underlying all these, the determination that no one who dies shall go unmourned...

Though it presents the classic tale of three mismatched housemates, this play is anything but conventional. Jimmy is a restless young man, whose blistering, apparent honesty makes him more enemies than friends. Cliff is his calm, collected counterpart, and is often caught between the violent conflicts which frequently occur between Jimmy and his wife, Alison. Well-bred and downtrodden, she is hiding a secret from Jimmy and cannot find a way to tell him.

Into this eclectic mix is thrown Helena, Alison's uptight friend. These characters are wound up like clockwork, and it is impossible to see where it will end.

The struggle for identity experienced by post-war youth has never been presented as well as it has been here. Similarly to Blache DuBois, John Osborne's characters must find a place in this strange, raw new world, or be lost.

Look Back in Anger - Identity Quotations

What Are Those Blue Remembered Hills? Wider Reading (Drama) 5: Blue Remembered Hills

Dennis Potter's deceptively simple tale relates the activities of seven West-Country seven-year-olds on a summer afternoon during the Second World War.

Easy-going Willie tags along as burly Peter bullies gentle Raymond and is challenged by fair-minded John. Plain Audrey is overshadowed by pretty Angela, and wreaks her angry frustrations on the boys. All of them gang up on the terrified "Donald Duck" who, abused by his mother and ridiculed by his peers, plays his own dangerous game of pyromania which ends in tragedy.

The primary trait of this play is that, although the characters are children, they are all played by adult actors. Childhood is the very epitome of innocence, and the author contradicts this throughout the entire play, as the supposedly guileless children victimise, stereotype, fight and even kill, in their own version of the adult world.

Potter's television play terrifies the audience as they realise what effect their actions have on their young, and gives us a fascinating insight into the benign cruelty of childhood.

Blue Remembered Hills - Identity Quotations