Déjàvu Déjàvu Déjàvu (1992) is a stage play by John Osborne. It was Osborne's final work for the theatre, the failure of which on the stage made him decide to give up play-writing. The play is a sequel to Osborne's first successful play, "Look Back in Anger" (1956); it portrays the life and thoughts of the central character from the earlier play, Jimmy Porter (referred to as J.P.), in middle age. Osborne had been thinking about a sequel to "Look Back in Anger" for some years, and had been working on a draft of the play since 1987 when he started
Look Back in Anger best remembered for, though, are Jimmy's tirades. Some of these are directed against generalised British middle-class smugness in the post-atomic world. Many are directed against the female characters, a very distinct echo of Osborne's uneasiness with women, including his mother, Nellie Beatrice, whom he describes in his autobiography "A Better Class of Person" as "hypocritical, self-absorbed, calculating and indifferent". Madeline, the lost love Jimmy pines for, is based on Stella Linden, the older rep-company actress who first encouraged Osborne to write. After the first production in London, Osborne began a relationship with Mary Ure, who played Alison; he divorced his