Sara Martín Alegre P08/04540/02135

G.�B.
Shaw
in England. By the 1940s, the well-made play was sounding too
artificial –the twist endings too contrived– and naturalism, especially
in acting, was gaining ground.
The main playwrights of the time were 
Noël�Coward
, 
Terence�Rattigan
and
J.�B.�Priestley
, though the more experimental plays in verse by 
T.�S.�Eliot
and
Christopher�Fry
also enjoyed considerable success.
3.2. Absurdist drama and social and political drama
By the 1950s, the time was ripe for a reaction against West End drama. Almost
simultaneously, the West End stage faced two challenges:
1)
one posed by the 
minimalist,�absurdist�drama
of Samuel Beckett's 
Waiting
for Godot
(1955),
2)
the other by the 
socially�critical�theatre
of John Osborne's 
Look Back in
Anger
(1956).
Samuel Beckett (left) and John Osborne (right).

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© FUOC
• P08/04540/02135
23
Post-War English Literature 1945-1990
Beckett
proposed a reflection on the form of drama, drawing the
audience's attention to the artificiality of speech, plot and characters
on the stage. 
Osborne
invited the audience to consider the new sense
of social alienation of the rising lower middle-class, also shattering
conventions as to the decorum so far observed on the English stage.
Look Back in Anger
also secured the financial survival of George Devine's
English�Stage�Company
at the Royal Court, Chelsea. This company exerted
an enormous influence as it specialised in staging work by new dramatists,
among them 
N.�F.�Simpson
,