The writer, John Osborne, worked as an actor and Stage Manager at Derby Playhouse, just a year before he wrote this seminal piece. He set this play in a large East Midlands town and his autobiography suggests some alarming similarities with his own life, just before he burst onto the scene and set the course for the Royal Court to become the home of new writing.
Derby Theatre Productions. Friday 4 March - Saturday 26 March Average: 4 1 vote. The Stage. The Guardian. Expect sizzling passions, dark humour and intriguing plot twists. The first act opens on a Sunday in April. Jimmy and Cliff are reading the Sunday papers while Alison is ironing in a corner of the room. Jimmy is a hot tempered young man and he begins to try and provoke both Cliff and Alison.
He is antagonistic towards Cliff's working class background and makes fun of him for his low intelligence. Cliff is good natured and takes the antagonism. Jimmy attempts to provoke his wife, Alison, by making fun of her family and her well-heeled life before she married him. Jimmy also seems to display a nostalgia for England's powerful past.
He notes that the world has entered a "dreary" American age, a fact he begrudgingly accepts. Alison tires of Jimmy's rants and begs for peace. This makes Jimmy more fevered in his insults. Cliff attempts to keep peace between the two and this leads to a playful scuffle between the two.
Their wrestling ends up running into Alison, causing her to fall down. Jimmy is sorry for the incident, but Alison makes him leave the room. After Jimmy leaves, Alison confides to Cliff that she is pregnant with Jimmy's child, though she has not yet told Jimmy. Cliff advises her to tell him, but when Cliff goes out and Jimmy re-enters the room, the two instead fall into an intimate game. Jimmy impersonates a stuffed bear and Alison impersonates a toy squirrel.
Cliff returns to tell Alison that her old friend, Helena Charles , has called her on the phone. Alison leaves to take the call and returns with the news that Helena is coming to stay for a visit. Jimmy does not like Helena and goes into a rage in which he wishes that Alison would suffer in order to know what it means to be a real person.
He curses her and wishes that she could have a child only to watch it die. Two weeks later, Helena has arrived and Alison discusses her relationship with Jimmy.
She tells of how they met and how, in their younger days, they used to crash parties with their friend Hugh Tanner. Jimmy maintains an affection for Hugh's mother, though his relationship with Hugh was strained when Hugh left to travel the world and Jimmy stayed to be with Alison. Jimmy seems to regret that he could not leave, but he is also angry at Hugh for abandoning his mother.
Helena inquires about Alison's affectionate relationship with Cliff and Alison tells her that they are strictly friends. Cliff and Jimmy return to the flat and Helena tells them that she and Alison are leaving for church. Jimmy goes into an anti-religious rant and ends up insulting Alison's family once again.
Helena becomes angry and Jimmy dares her to slap him on the face, warning her that he will slap her back. He tells her of how he watched his father die as a young man. His father had been injured fighting in the Spanish Civil War and had returned to England only to die shortly after.
Alison and Helena begin to leave for church and Jimmy feels betrayed by his wife. A phone call comes in for Jimmy and he leaves the room. He is a hopeful politician being trained in Sandhurst Academy, a military school. Jimmy says that Brother Nigel might end up in the Cabinet one day. But Jimmy also sees him as a sellout, though he is a patriotic Englishman.
Jimmy says his father died alone and lonely, having been abandoned by everyone except him [Jimmy]. Hugh Tanner is an important ghost character in the play. Hugh took in Jimmy and Alison shortly after their marriage when they could not afford a place of their own. Jimmy feels bad that Hugh was not patriotic enough to stay in Britain and face the postwar difficulties.
Neither did he do well in abandoning his poor old mother. Hugh joined Alison and Jimmy in deliberately crashing the parties of the upper class members of society whom Alison knew. He says that this attachment is because she helped Jimmy with the setting up of the sweet stall and also because she loves Alison, though Alison is not willing to reciprocate the gesture.
He does not hesitate to take the next train to London to see her. When Jimmy comes back, we learn that Mrs Tanner has died and will be buried on Thursday. She is another person that Jimmy watches as she dies. Mrs Redfern , wife to Colonel Redfern and mother of Alison, is another ghost character in the play. She is noted for her stiff opposition to the marriage between Alison and Jimmy.
For instance, she hires private detectives to follow Jimmy and to enquire about his background and morality. The idea was to find something indicting to be used as a good excuse for stopping the marriage. Mrs Redfern also continues to write to Alison even after the marriage.
This is one of the things that offend Jimmy in the play. He actually finds one. What makes him angrier about these letters is that he is conspicuously omitted in them. In other words, he is not mentioned in the letters at all. Madeline is an older woman that Jimmy once fell in love with. He talks about her most of the time. She is ten years older than Jimmy. She was like a mentor to Jimmy but they really got along in their relationship.
It is apparent that Madeline and Jimmy were very compatible. She must also be religious because Jimmy says that she might be in church where the bells are ringing. Among the themes in the play are marriage and class conflict, love, friendship, survival, betrayal, gender oppression, poverty, anger, disillusionment, death. The play is rich in symbols like the Squirrel and the Teddy Bear, church bells, newspapers, Trumpet and Jazz. There is also foreshadowing as a dramatic element.
This occurs when Jimmy wishes that something would happen that would make Alison learn a great lesson. He also wishes for her to have a child who would die so that she would learn a great lesson. Alison eventually loses her pregnancy. This is also dramatic irony in the sense that when Jimmy makes the statement, he does not know that Alison is pregnant, but Cliff knows.
He is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria, where he researches into African literature and criticism. Posted: August 25, July 16, by Eyoh Etim. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Eyoh Etim.
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