In 1993, a year before his death, Osborne wrote that the opening night was "an occasion I only partly remember, but certainly with more accuracy than those who subsequently claimed to have been present and, if they are to be believed, would have filled the theatre several times over". Reviews were mixed. Most of the critics who attended the first night felt it was a failure, and it looked as if the English Stage Company was going to go into liquidation. Milton Shulman in the "Evening Standard", for example, called the play "a failure" and "a self-pitying snivel". But the following Sunday, Kenneth Tynan of "The Observer" – the most influential critic of the day – praised it to the skies: "I could not love anyone who did not wish to see "Look Back in Anger"", he wrote, "It is the best young play of its decade". Harold Hobson of "The Sunday Times" called Osborne "a writer of outstanding promise". During production the married Osborne began a relationship with Mary Ure, and would divorce his wife, Pamela Lane, to marry Ure in 1957.