Look Back in Anger (1956) is considered to be an autobiographical piece based on Osborne’s unhappy marriage to actress Pamela Lane and their life in a cramped-up accommodation in Derby. While Osborne aspired to make a career in theatre, Lane was more practical and materialistic, not taking Osborne’s ambitions seriously while cuckolding him with a local dentist. It also draws from Osborne’s earlier life, for example, the wrenching speech of witnessing a loved one’s death was a replay of the death of his father, Thomas.

The play was written in seventeen days in a deck chair on Morecambe Pier in May of 1955. The play was first rejected by many of the agents and theatre companies that Osborne approached about producing it. George Divine, the creative producer for the struggling Royal Court Theatre, decided to gamble on the play and staged its first production. The pray opened on May 8, 1956. It received mixed. reviews from English theatre critics, yet it won a rave review from The Times. This established the play’s notoriety and helped it eventually build an audience. It was the first well-known example of Kitchen Sink drama,’ a style of theatre that explored the emotion and drama beneath the surface of ordinary domestic life. Jimmy Porter, the play’s main character, became the model for the ‘Angry Young Man’, a nickname given to an entire generation of artists and working class young men in post-World War II British society.

Look Back in Anger is commonly credited with being the play in which Osborne expressed a sense of frustration and anger at the depressing circumstances of post-war Britain. Jimmy Porter is regarded as an embodiment of the frustrations of a particular age and class, especially the generation of young men who have been expecting to leave behind their lower-class origins by using higher education. Jimmy is educated beyond his social roots; however, he cannot get what he expects from his education.

Jimmy is frustrated due to the fact that his educational background does not fulfil his anticipations. Therefore, it can be counted as one of the reasons for Jimmy’s rage. Throughout the play Jimmy rails about politics, religion and other social institutions. Jimmy feels betrayed by the previous generations because his generation is experiencing the disappointment of World War II. However, Jimmy is looking for some enthusiasm instead of exhaustion. Nevertheless, he had a father who believed that there were still, even after the slaughter of the first World War, causes good enough to fight for and collective actions worthy of individual support. He claims:

I suppose people of our generation aren’t able to die for ‘good causes any longer. We had all this done for us, in the thirties and the forties, when we were still kids. There aren’t any good, brave causes left. If the big bang does come, and we all get killed off, it won’t be in aid of the old-fashioned, grand design. It’ll just be for the Brave New-nothing-very-much thank-you. About as pointless and inglorious as stepping in’ front of a bus. (Look Back in Anger, p. 61)