Angry Young Men Trivia Quiz

Answer: John Osborne

'Look Back in Anger' was Osborne's breakthrough play, written in 1956, and making an immediate impact. Based partly on his own marriage, the plot focused on Jimmy Porter and his wife. The play became a benchmark for what became known as 'kitchen sink' dramas, based on working class characters, rather than the lifestyles of the rich which fewer people could relate to.

The 'angry young man' phrase was coined by a press officer named George Fearon at the theatre where 'Look Back in Anger' was due to be staged. The media jumped on the expression as shorthand for left-wing playwrights who based their dramas on everyday life.

Answer: John Osborne

First performed in 1957, 'The Entertainer' tells the story of Archie Rice, a music hall entertainer who is becoming obsolete as the new era of rock and roll music captures public attention. The play was a success, not least because it had Laurence Olivier in the leading role, one he went on to play in the 1960 film version. Olivier had not been a fan of Osborne's but was convinced by the American playwright Arthur Miller to reconsider his views.

The play is usually viewed as being a metaphor for the decline of the British Empire. Osborne himself created the script for the film alongside Nigel Kneale, an established screenwriter and author in his own right.

Answer: John Osborne

This 1964 play is about a divorce lawyer who is disillusioned with his life. He is bored with his family, has empty affairs and dislikes his clients. Act One consists of him explaining the emptiness of his life while Act Two shows him getting his comeuppance from everyone he has treated badly.

Nicol Williamson was the first actor to perform the role and also appeared in the 1968 film version for which Osborne wrote the screenplay. Like other Osborne plays, the story can be seen as the playwright drawing an equivalence between the fall of the protagonist and the decay of society.

Answer: Arnold Wesker

Arnold Wesker is another writer who primarily wrote plays, although he was also a prolific journalist and published short stories and poetry. He was classed as an 'angry young man' due to his political views - he was sent to prison for taking part in demonstrations against nuclear weapons - and the themes of his plays.

'Chicken Soup With Barley' was first performed in 1958 in Coventry before transferring to London the same year. The plot covers a working class Jewish family, with communist and socialist beliefs, against the backdrop of war and post-war reality. Wesker explores how hard it is for the family to stand by their beliefs as the world seems to fall apart around them.

Answer: Arnold Wesker

This play dates from the late 1950s and is part of what is called 'The Wesker Trilogy', with 'Chicken Soup With Barley' the first and 'Roots' the second. It takes three characters from the first play, the mother, daughter and son, and transplants them to Norfolk. The three of them, along with the daughter's husband, decide to live 'off grid' (and you thought that was a recent thing) but struggle to maintain their socialist ideals against the realities of life.

The play ends with the disillusioned family moving back to London thirteen years later, feeling that they had failed. Wesker took his title from William Morris's idea of a socialist ideal of a new Jerusalem, echoing William Blake's poem about building Jerusalem in England.

Answer: Arnold Wesker

This play received its premiere in London in 1962 and had its first performance on Broadway eighteen months later. Based during conscription to carry out National Service after the Second World War, the main character is an upper class recruit who declines to become an officer and signs up as an ordinary airman in the RAF. As a socialist, he strongly disagrees with the idea that he should automatically become an officer.

The play focuses on the British class system and the pressure brought to bear on the character to toe the line and join his peers in the officer class. The title comes from the type of cafe often found in the East End of London, serving 'chips with everything'.

Answer: Harold Pinter

Pinter doesn't fit quite as neatly into the 'angry young men' category as some of the others, as his plays are not normally set in the 'kitchen sink' category and tend to be less easily understood. He did share the sense of disillusionment of his contemporaries, though, and is included in the group.

'The Dumb Waiter' was first performed in 1959 and is often described as a 'comedy of the absurd'. The plot involves two hitmen, waiting for instructions about their target. They are in a basement with a dumb waiter, a lift for food, periodically moving up and down with requests for food they cannot supply. The two men become increasingly stressed by their environment and the demands from an unseen and unknown third person.

Answer: Harold Pinter

This was Pinter's first full length play and is set in a coastal boarding house which has seen better days. One of the residents, Stanley, is about to celebrate his birthday but the party is disturbed by two unexpected visitors who are looking for Stanley. As this is Pinter, the reasons never become clear, but they corner Stanley, mistreat him and eventually take him away to a character named Monty, who is never seen or explicitly explained.

Some critics have characterised the play as also being 'theatre of the absurd' due to its ambiguities and a plot that seems designed to confuse rather than enlighten.

Answer: Harold Pinter

This 1984 play is Pinter railing against totalitarianism and the abuse of human rights carried out by governments. The action takes place in a single room where a couple and their young son have been arrested by Nicolas, an army officer. The plot involves rape and torture, all of which takes place offstage but is referred to explicitly. The end is left ambiguous, but the implication is that none of the family survives.

Pinter deliberately kept the location vague, and was clear that democratic governments were as guilty as dictatorships of treating their perceived enemies inhumanely.

Answer: Kingsley Amis

Unlike the others in the quiz, Amis is best known for writing novels, although he also published poetry, scripts for television and short stories. What he shared with them was a disdain for the British class system and the pretentious nature of some of its members. Amis himself disliked the 'angry young man' tag and was described in one obituary as more of an 'irritable young man'.

'Lucky Jim' was his first novel, published in 1954 and based on the troubles of a junior history lecturer at an unnamed university - not one of the long established ones, though. The novel pokes fun at the affectations of the higher level professors and the manoeuvres of those trying to gain advancement by using romantic relationships.

Answer: Kingsley Amis

This 1955 novel seemed designed to annoy the Welsh as it makes fun of their devotion to their culture and love of tradition. The plot involves John, who has applied for a position as a librarian in the local Welsh town. Despite being married, he becomes involved with the wife of a wealthy local man. She has become bored by her upper middle-class way of life and sees John as a distraction - the problems caused by their affair make the novel an amusing read.

Amis uses the novel to poke fun at the pretentious lifestyle of the wealthy couple and the way John and his wife cling to their 'Welshness'. As Amis himself lived in Swansea, I assume the locals soon forgave him.

Answer: Kingsley Amis

Published much later, in 1986, 'The Old Devils' is also set in Wales. It features the return of Alun Weaver with his wife, Rhiannon, to his home town where he meets up with old friends who have stayed in the area. Alun's return causes upheaval as he sets about seducing his friends' wives while Rhiannon herself is drawn back to her first lover. Alun is a writer and minor celebrity but hopes to become a bigger fish in the smaller pool of the Welsh town.

The themes include much drinking of alcohol, used to numb the reality of daily life, and contemplation of growing older - the group is in their sixties and approaching seventy - with its various indignities. Amis won the Booker Prize for the novel which, despite the content, is classed as a typical comedic work by the author.