Jimmy Akingbola a national tour. He played opposite Roger Lloyd-Pack and Shaun Evans in Joe Penhall's award-winning play; it was directed by Kathy Burke. Akingbola later went on to star in "The Cut" at the Donmar Warehouse opposite Ian McKellen, directed by Michael Grandage. Additional roles include Akingbola playing anti-hero Jimmy Porter in the John Osborne play of "Look Back in Anger" at the Jermyn Street Theatre in July 2008; he was the first black actor to play the role. The same year he played the title role of "Othello" for the company Frantic Assembly, which received a TMA Award. Akingbola’s television
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