John Osborne Plays 2

This second collection of John Osborne's dramatic work includes The Entertainer, The Hotel in Amsterdam, West of Suez and Time Present. 'A lifelong satirist of prigs and puritans, whether of the Right or Left, he took no hostages, expecting from other people the same unyielding, unflinching commitment to their view of the truth which he took for granted in his own. Of all the British playwrights of the twentieth century he is the one who risked the most. And risking most, frequently offered the most rewards.' David Hare, Spectator 'Osborne was an instinctive writer, but he had genius in his early years for capturing the national mood and conveying undiluted feeling... one wonders whether any of the bright new talents will have the courage to do what Osborne did in the past: to encapsulate on the tiny stage the state of the nation at large.' Guardian Praise for The Entertainer 'The rancid, dead-accurate domestic dialogue is a joy, with clichés dropping like bats from the ceiling... the play becomes a flamboyant coronach for England's lost greatness, enshrining one of the great characters in modern drama.' Daily Telegraph 'Like all Osborne's best work, this is a play about personal failure, individual desolation, the frustration of a community. One of the reasons why Osborne changed the face of English theatre is that he made passionate personal drama out of a national malaise.' Sunday Times

John Osborne was born in London in 1929. Before becoming a playwright he worked as a journalist, assistant stage manager and repertory theatre actor. Seeing an advertisement for new plays in The Stage in 1956, Osborne submitted Look Back in Anger. Not only was the play produced, but it was to become considered as the turning point in post-war British theatre. Osborne's protagonist, Jimmy Porter, captured the rebelliousness of an entire post-war generation of 'angry young men'. His other plays include The Entertainer (1957), Luther (1961), Inadmissible Evidence (1964), and A Patriot for Me (1966). He also wrote two volumes of autobiography, A Better Class of Person (1981) and Almost a Gentleman (1991) published together as Looking Back: Never Explain, Never Apologise. His last play, Deja Vu (1991), returns to the characters of Look Back in Anger, over thirty years later. Both Look Back in Anger and The Entertainer were adapted for film, and in 1963 Osborne won an Academy Award for his screenplay for Tom Jones. John Osborne died on 24 December 1994.