Good Production

Apart from the appalling miscasting of the two women in "Look Back in Anger," the production was a good one. The whole play rises and falls with its Jimmy Porter. In what is surely the best written part since Shaw stopped writing his masterpieces in the twenties, Tim Elliot rose to the occasion with a bravura performance of this whining, egotistical, and unpleasant person.

When he was off-stage, the play dragged, but like Hamlet he is on-stage nearly all the time, and his verbal fireworks kept the audience either amused, disgusted (people did walk out) or just furious. But you couldn't possibly be apathetic to him.

Unfortunately Tim Elliot had an upper-class English voice, while Melwynne Smith as his wife Alison had a slight New Zealand accent, which tended to make Jimmy's tirades against the class barriers rather pointless. But ably supported by Michael Blake, as the easy-going and likeable Cliff, Tim Elliot gave a performance which will be hard to match in the coming season.