Angst. There, in one word is what this play is all about.
Many of my friends who’ve read this book recently, find it a trifle clichéd.
The point is, Look Back in Anger has been copied so many times over, in so many countries around the world, that it seems to the modern reader, just one of many.
What people forget is that this is play is THE ORIGINAL.
So if readers find similarity with James Dean’s rebellious character, or (for Indian readers) Amitabh Bachhan’s portrayal of the angry young man, know this – this is the play, which started it all.
But even then, it still remains one of the best depictions of middle-class angst. Of the unique pointless torment that millions of young men and women go through, every generation.
Read the play, if not for anything else, but for the characters. So real, that they take up flesh and blood, right in your head. So real, that you feel that you’ve known them for years.
And better still; enact the play with your friends. (It needs but few character actors.) It will, and I speak from experience, exorcise quite a few ghosts lurking in your soul.