SOURCE: Quigley, Austin E. “The Personal, the Political, and the Postmodern in Osborne's Look Back in Anger and Déjàvu.” In John Osborne: A Casebook, edited by Patricia D. Denison, pp. 35-59. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1997.

In the following essay, Quigley contends that Déjàvu offers some insight into why Look Back in Anger is “widely regarded as a very important but not very good play.”

Forty years after it made its historic appearance on the London stage, Look Back in Anger is widely regarded as a very important but not very good play. A generation of British playwrights, including Brenton, Stoppard, and Hare, have acknowledged its importance to their subsequent careers, but most, including Osborne, who later described it as a “rather old-fashioned play,”¹ now see its weaknesses as clearly as its strengths. Hare's recent praise of the play is characteristically qualified:

I think...