Employing a nonchronological, prismatic approach to the life and career of acclaimed British playwright Osborne, Heilpern (theater critic at the New York Observer
) steps behind the curtain to find an abyss, a soul in anguish: "I feel such despair... desolation, hopelessness," Osborne wrote in his journal. Stunned by the death of his father when he was a child, the 15-year-old Osborne was expelled from school in 1943 after hitting the headmaster. In London, he was soon attracted to the theater, where he could "camouflage his own lower-class roots." While touring as an actor, he wrote four full-length plays before the collapse of his first marriage gave him the material for the autobiographical Look Back in Anger
(1956), expressing such "immensity of feeling and class hatred" that it altered the course of English theater. He followed with The Entertainer
in 1957 and other successes, including his 1963 Oscar-winning screenplay for Tom Jones
. As Heilpern probes Osborne's caustic creativity and his volatile relationships with his wives, he layers in myriad intimate details, paralleling the playwright's life with his dramas: "Osborne dreaded loss—a legacy of his father's death—and loss seeps through his plays." Writing with verve and sensitivity, he skillfully interweaves a wealth of excerpts from Osborne's letters and private journals. (Jan.)
