Renaissance Theatre Company both the theatre and television productions of "Look Back in Anger" by John Osborne, presented first in Belfast then in London at the Lyric Theatre, starring Branagh as Jimmy Porter and Emma Thompson as Alison. Renaissance moved into different mediums such as Branagh's Academy Award-winning film version of Henry V, but also by producing three Shakespeare plays on radio: "Hamlet", "Romeo and Juliet", and finally, "King Lear" starring Sir John Gielgud. The company's last two major stage productions were "Uncle Vanya" (with Richard Briers and Peter Eyre) and "Coriolanus" produced in conjunction with the Chichester Festival Theatre and starring Kenneth
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