Personal Enemy

Personal Enemy
Written by	John Osborne
Date premiered	1955
Place premiered	Harrogate
Original language	English
Genre	social realism
Setting	A small American town

Personal Enemy is a play by John Osborne and Anthony Creighton. It was written in 1954, prior to Osborne's 'big break' with Look Back in Anger at the Royal Court Theatre in 1956, and first performed in Harrogate in 1955. It was thought that the play manuscript was lost, but copies were found (along with another early Osborne play, The Devil Inside Him) in the Lord Chamberlain's archive in the British Library in 2008. The two plays were subsequently published as Before Anger, with a foreword by Peter Nichols. Personal Enemy was produced in its uncensored form for the first time in 2010 at the White Bear Theatre, as part of their Lost Classics Project, before transferring to New York's Brits Off Broadway festival at 59E59 Theaters in November of that year. The play is the only work by Osborne to be set in the United States.

Set in 1953, in the fictional US town of Langley Springs, Personal Enemy tells us the story of the Constant family. Mrs Constant is the head of the household and inspiration of the town. Her qualities and principles embody the ethos of the community: decency, godliness and pleasantness are paramount. Mr Constant is doing well for himself — the American Dream is becoming a reality for this hard working, decent, suburban man in the insurance racket.

The play opens on Mrs Constant's birthday. Her daughter, Caryl, her son-in-law, Sam, and her last remaining son, Arnie, are planning a picnic. Tomorrow is the second anniversary of Donald Constant's death. Mrs Constant's eldest son died defending American ideals in the Korean War. A corner of the Constant living room is devoted to enshrining his memory. However, Don was not perhaps as strait-laced as she might have thought. When Caryl discovers a book full of dangerous ideas that Arnie is reading — and the inscription within it from the communist librarian, Ward Perry — she reveals that Don, too, had a friendship with Ward, and that he too had been given a copy of the forbidden book. Caryl launches an attack on her brothers and their high ideas, asserting an image of a world that is structured, logical and controlled and she accuses ‘clever-talk’ of perverting that world into something messy, tangled and interconnected. Her tirade is halted by a telegram informing the Constants that Don is alive. He was a prisoner of war and will be returning to the USA shortly.

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