The Sheenant Chronicles: 'Look Back In Anger'
…Amy McGrath of 'Write Hear' and I compare and contrast the performance of Jimmy Porter through the eyes of David Tennant...and Michael Sheen
Yes, we know Michael Sheen played the role first, and there would likely be some sort of row between the two actors if this were an episode of Staged, but luckily I'm here to speak about David.
Or as Michael called him: “You narcissistic Scottish man boy child…”
This is the first article in the ‘Sheenant Chronicles’ series, a collaborative effort between myself and my Substack colleague, Amy McGrath of Write Hear (within her Wales Unveiled series). In this and future articles, we’ll examine shared roles as inhabited by Scottish native David Tennant and Welsh-born actor Michael Sheen.
In this kick-off article, we’re looking at the role of Jimmy Porter, the protagonist in John Osborne’s 1956 play Look Back in Anger. But before I begin, I must insist you go off and read Amy McGrath’s part of the Sheenant Chronicles. Hers is the opening salvo, and it introduces Michael Sheen’s runs as Jimmy Porter in 1995 and 1999.
Go read hers now, and then come back for David!
By the latter half of 1995, David Tennant had been living in London less than two years. He’d only done a few plays since his arrival in the capital from his native Scotland (The Slab Boys Trilogy in Sep-Nov 1994 at the Young Vic, and What The Butler Saw at the Royal National Theatre Lyttelton and then on tour from Feb-May 1995) but he’d managed to score a leading role in a third production: An Experienced Woman Gives Advice. The production was to begin in November 1995 at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester and run until mid-December.
For his role as Kenny in An Experienced Woman Gives Advice, David earned a Manchester Evening News Theatre Award (MENTA) nomination for Best Actor in a Supporting Role, and a British Regional Theatre Award nomination for Best Actor. Reviews were by and large very favorable, and many people saw him play the role. One of those who saw David in the play was director Gregory Hersov.
Hersov - who was Artistic Director at The Royal Exchange Theatre Manchester from 1987-2014 - has written a book called Something Rich and Strange on his experiences while directing plays at the venue over those three decades. It’s a fascinating read for anyone interested in theatre and I can’t recommend it enough. If you’re interested in reading it for yourself, click the link above. You won’t be sorry!
When Amy and I spoke to Hersov for this series on Michael, David and Look Back In Anger, he told us that David’s role as Kenny in An Experienced Woman Gives Advice had made a huge impression on many people at the Royal Exchange, and on him in particular. In fact, the young actor’s performance stuck in his head so firmly that in 1999, when he began auditions for a play he planned to produce at the Royal Exchange called King Lear, he decided to audition David for the role of Edgar.
David’s time in King Lear is a story for another day, but one thing Hersov told us about it simply must be relayed to our readers:
During rehearsals for King Lear, David spoke to Hersov about a play he’d gone along to see at the Royal National Theatre Lyttelton in London. It was a play he knew Hersov was in the midst of directing while simultaneously balancing King Lear rehearsals, so perhaps David had decided to go along to see it to learn more about how Hersov worked. Perhaps he’d gone along because he loved the play and wanted to see how it would be staged. Or perhaps he’d gone along to it because of the young actor who was its lead.
That play was 1999’s Look Back In Anger, starring Michael Sheen!
That’s remarkable enough, indeed…but doubly so when you consider that starring alongside Michael in the role of Alison Porter was Emma Fielding! Emma and David had worked together many times previously in drama school productions, as both had graduated in 1991 from the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, now the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. Emma and David had roles together in such school productions as 1990’s Neil Simon play Fools (with David as Leon and Emma as Leon’s lady love, Sophia) and 1991’s The Fruits Of Enlightenment.
I’ll speak more on those two plays at a future date. What’s relevant now is that Emma and David knew each other, and it must’ve been a treat for David to watch his former classmate play Alison Porter. And of course you’ve also got to be wondering what David thought of Michael.
Michael got rave reviews and an Olivier nomination for the role, so surely David thought it was wonderful. He certainly thought enough about the play to mention seeing it to Hersov. But what David said to him about it, I just don’t know. It would be another eighteen years before Michael and David would finally work together as leads (in Good Omens). They would forge a friendship that endures to this day.
As you know if you’ve read Amy’s article, Michael got to the role of Jimmy Porter in Look Back In Anger much faster than David did. Michael did it twice - once in 1995 at the Royal Exchange in Manchester, and again in 1999 at the Royal National Theatre Lyttelton. Both of his versions were on the stage.
David didn’t approach the role until 2005, but when he did, he did it three times (only one of which was conventional theatre). David’s first time as Jimmy was on the stage in 2005, first at the Royal Lyceum in Edinburgh and then in a transfer to the Theatre Royal in Bath. His second time was in 2006 at the Royal Court in a rehearsed reading for the play’s 50th Anniversary. His third time was in 2016, when he starred in an audio version of the play.
Amy’s already featured Michael’s two runs in the role, so it’s my turn to feature David’s. Let’s take them one by one!
When David stepped on stage as Jimmy Porter for the first time in January 2005, it was at the Royal Lyceum in Edinburgh. It was the first time in almost a decade that he’d been back in his native Scotland for a theatre role (the last time had been 1996’s The Glass Menagerie.)
The company did its first two weeks of rehearsals for the production in Ealing before traveling to Edinburgh for the finish to rehearsals and opening. The director, Richard Baron, had worked with David as early as 1991 in Shinda The Magic Ape (and in three other plays since then: 1992’s Merlin, 1994’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night, and 1996’s The Glass Menagerie) and was very familiar with his leading man.
Before tackling the role, David spoke about Jimmy Porter in a 2005 interview with Theatre Scotland’s Mark Fisher:
It’s not a nice play, and he’s not a nice man. But I don’t think he’s as irredeemable as history has painted him. He’s brilliantly funny, and that’s part of what makes him such an attractive character to play. He has this ability with language which is thrilling and at the same time ghastly. He can reduce people so eloquently. It’s appalling and delicious. I was talking to Michael Sheen, who played the part, and he said you get this extraordinary feeling halfway through when you realise there’s nobody in the theatre that likes you.
Given the fact David had not only met Michael properly during the filming of Bright Young Things in 2003, but had also went to see him in the play during his 1999 run in the role, I believe it’s certainly possible David gave Michael a call to ask him about how he approached Jimmy Porter.
So not only did David go to see Michael play Jimmy in his 1999 performance at the Royal National Theatre Lyttelton in London, he was impressed enough by it to remember it six years later…and made sure to talk to Michael about the role before he played it himself!
It would be a fun thing to ask one of them at a con now, wouldn’t it?
Anyway…
Look Back in Anger debuted on 14 January 2005 at the Royal Lyceum in Edinburgh for a total of twenty-seven performances (Tues-Sat at 7:45pm, with matinees on 19, 22, 26 & 29 Jan, and 2 & 5 Feb at 2:30pm). There were no performances on Sundays or Mondays. It closed in Edinburgh on 12 February 2005.
It then transferred to Bath Theatre Royal starting 14 February 2005 for eight performances (Mon-Wed at 7:30pm and Thurs-Sat at 8pm, with matinees on 16 & 19 Feb at 2:30pm). It closed on 19 February 2005.
Other than David, the cast featured Kelly Reilly as Alison Porter, Steven McNicoll as Cliff Lewis, Alexandra Moen as Helena Charles, and Gareth Thomas as Colonel Redfern. (As an aside, you might be more familiar with Kelly in her current role as Beth Dutton on the American neo-Western drama series Yellowstone, opposite Kevin Costner).
Reviews for the 2005 shows were full of praise, and David got glowing reviews for his role as Jimmy Porter.
His performance was called “tremendous”, “compellingly detestable”, “refreshingly agile” with “breakneck fluidity”, and “odious but irresistible”.
The Edinburgh Guide said, “David Tennant, in a most welcome return to the Scottish stage, imparts a fierce, febrile energy to Porter.” Thom Dibdin of The Stage said, "The energy is all but psychotic when it comes to David Tennant's Jimmy. He is like a caged animal, with the petulance of a child and articulacy of a natural orator, yet he oozes sexuality in a way which justifies the whole strange menage a trois with Alison and fellow lodger Cliff. And makes Helena's later passion towards him inevitable.”
The Sunday Herald's Mark Brown called David's performance “pretty close to flawless. Turning on a sixpence from ranting secular priest to self-appointed court jester, alternating between troubled, solitary jazzman and desperately needy emotional cripple, the actor has the keenest understanding of his role”.
Finally, The Sunday Times said David “plays [Jimmy] in a coruscatingly bruising and vulnerable performance, as a study of strength that feeds on weakness.”
David won the 2004-5 CATS (Critics' Awards for Theatre in Scotland) Award for Best Male Performance for the Edinburgh Lyceum run of Look Back in Anger as Jimmy Porter. He accepted the award during the CATS ceremonies on 5 June 2005 at the Tolbooth in Stirling, Scotland.
The board said of him:
David Tennant's performance swept us off our feet, electrifying and mesmerising as he paced the stage like a caged animal. Whether he was perching on furniture or strutting dictator-like, it was impossible to take your eyes off him as he summoned up the hateful but irresistible Jimmy Porter.
Curious about how riveting he was in the role? Well, luckily for us, it was recorded! Here’s a short video clip of David as Jimmy from the National Video Archive of Performance (NVAP). This clip is part of a full recording. It was recorded at the play’s 17 February 2005 performance at Theatre Royal Bath (a recording you can generally see in person at the V&A, though at the moment they’re moving their archives and access is halted until sometime in 2025):
And finally, if you're super curious and would love to read a resource pack about how Richard Baron and the cast and crew of David’s production of Look Back in Anger directed, set up, costumed, and organized the play, you can do that, too! If that’s your jam, here’s a Resource Pack you can download for the play at Scribd.
The second time David played the role of Jimmy Porter, it was a one-off affair.
On 8 May 2006 - exactly fifty years to the day the play was first performed - David appeared at a birthday tribute to the play and its writer John Osborne at London’s Royal Court Theatre to reprise his role as Jimmy Porter. Ben Walden was the host for the evening, which also included Corin Redgrave reading the play’s original review, Damien Lewis as Osborne, Simon Day as Tony Richardson and Nicholas Le Prevost as George Devine evoking the 1956 production.
Three long extracts of Look Back in Anger were also performed that evening, which were directed by Joe Hill-Gibbins and Ian Rickson. Starring alongside David in the role of Jimmy’s wife Alison was David’s ex-girlfriend, Anne-Marie Duff (the two had been a couple for four years after starring together in Maxim Gorky's Vassa in 1999). Steven McNicoll reprised his role as Cliff Lewis, and Helen McCrory took on the role of Helena.
Michael Billington of The Guardian said of this performance:
David Tennant's lean, hungry Jimmy was filled with a flailing, neurotic energy. He prowled with barefoot vitality and, like Hamlet, was full of wild and whirling words, but he made you feel everything he did was directed at Anne-Marie Duff's provocatively silent Alison, stuck behind her eternal ironing-board…the great moment came at the climax when Tennant, standing stock still, slowly turned his eyes towards Duff's Alison as if they could forge a new relationship out of shared suffering.
After this performance, it would be ten years before David would revisit the role. When he did, it wouldn’t be on stage, but in an audio play.
Since 2016 was the 60th anniversary of the first production of John Osborne’s Look Back In Anger, David decided he wanted to pursue doing a revival of the play. He said he felt he was a bit too long in the tooth to play Jimmy again on stage, but knew he could get away with it for a BBC Radio 4 audio production.
David got his dear friend and fellow actor Richard Wilson to direct it, and snagged Ian McKellan for the role of Colonel Redfern. Nancy Carroll as Alison, Daniel Evans as Cliff, and Claire Price as Helena rounded out the cast, and Clive Brill of Brill Productions was the 90-minute play’s producer. It was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 at 2:30 pm on Saturday, 30 April 2016.
That same day at 8 pm, David also hosted an hour-long episode of BBC Radio 4’s Archive On 4. His episode (produced by Joe Wheeler for Bite Media) was called Tennant Looks Back at Osborne and was an examination of the controversy the play’s original production stirred up when it was first performed. This is how it was described before its broadcast:
Sixty years ago, one small play shocked British theatre to its core and started a cultural revolution. John Osborne, a writer from an unfashionable Midlands city, put ordinary lives on stage and made them an extraordinary comment on post-war Britain. As he prepares to star in a new production for Radio 4, David Tennant explores John Osborne’s own papers to uncover how he put his own life and relationships into Look Back in Anger.
Along the way, we look back at the anger which greeted the play from many critics. The BBC’s theatre critic Ivor Brown called it, “unspeakably dirty and squalid. It is difficult to believe that a colonel’s daughter, brought up with some standards, would have stayed in this sty for a day.” He went on to fume, “I felt angry because it wasted my time.” He was one of many who hated the play.
David Tennant hears interviews with John Osborne and reads his personal letters, as well as archives of critic Kenneth Tynan and director Tony Richardson. He also plays extracts from previous productions, including a classic with Richard Burton as Jimmy Porter.
Contributors include playwright David Hare, critic Michael Billington, and actors Gary Raymond and George Devine.
During that broadcast, David had this to say about the play: “When I first read Look Back in Anger it appealed to me vividly, and as a teenage drama student I became obsessed with the play...and the angry young man at its center.”
If you haven’t already and are interested in listening to David’s 2016 re-visit of his role as Jimmy Porter and/or the Archive On 4 episode broadcast the same day, I’ve got some options for you:
Look Back In Anger (2016): at The Internet Archive / YouTube / Audible US
Archive On 4 Tennant Looks Back at Osborne: at BBC Radio 4 / GoogleDrive
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I’ve seen David’s 2005 recorded version of Look Back in Anger; I saw it at the V&A back in 2017. It’s a stunning play, and David’s frenetic pace and the thread of simmering violence and resentment in his tone made for a gripping watch. I listened to the 2016 audio revival and David’s re-interpretation of the character, eleven years on…noting how he sounded more world-weary and resigned. I enjoyed the differences, but honestly? I much preferred the 2005 version.
But that’s just me. You should do the same: go listen to the tone of the opening scene I posted above from the play’s 2005 run at Theatre Royal Bath, and then listen to the 2016 opening scene of the play from the link I provided above. Compare the tones. I’m curious…which one do you prefer?
Before we close out this bit on David’s tenure as Jimmy Porter, I wanted to share a few photographs from people close to the 2005 production:
In Oct 2017, Dan Travis - the Royal Lyceum’s deputy stage manager - posted the following behind-the-scenes look at the cast of Look Back in Anger on his Instagram. It’s such a great photo, everyone should see it!
In June 2023, Steven McNicoll (who played Cliff Lewis in the 2005 production of Look Back in Anger as well as the one-off performance in 2006), posted this throwback photo of himself, David and Alexandra Moen, who played Helena, on his Instagram account.
He commented, tongue-in-cheek: “I had my lines written on the salad cream. But, true professional that he is, David had his lines glued on to the newspaper.”
And that, Tennant fans, concludes David’s part in the ‘Sheenant Chronicles’ saga of Look Back In Anger.
But, dear readers, stay turned to this space. There are quite a few interesting David and Michael “crossovers” to do, and Amy and I consider it our duty to deliver the goods!
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Excellent piece! I loved reading about both David and Michael in the role. I saw the recording of David's performance at the V&A (many years ago now) and adored it. What a great idea for this series!
I'm also very much looking forward to your eventual King Lear story (that's one I've tried and failed to find more information on in the past - as I know that's where DT and Adam James became friends).
Oh I know I'm gonna love this series. Can't wait to read more <3