and Alison Porter (Alex Evans and Katy Dalton) are locked in a toxic marriage, their cramped one-room flat shoehorned into a roofspace the prison in which the endless cycle of abuse and reconciliation is played out. And watching – enabling – from his ringside seat is their neighbour and friend Cliff (Nathan Williams), whose feelings for Alison perhaps run deeper than anyone is admitting.

Local theatre company Young Bloods has this week presented a powerful production of Look Back in Anger, a play that created shockwaves when it was first staged in 1956.

It retains its power, and it is still shocking today but for different reasons I suspect. With the light being shone ever more brightly on the issue of domestic abuse today and the increasing awareness that horrific things happen behind closed doors, it’s hard to watch an abusive relationship being played out through the prism of the 1950s.

Jimmy is angry, and anything and everything provokes his rage and no one does that better than Alison. His tirades against her family that rapidly become a vitriolic attack against her leave one with the inescapable feeling that he picked her out specifically to have a target for his inexhaustible anger – he is working class, she is from an upper-middle class background; he is educated, she is not. He hates her family, hates what she stands for but she has played her part in creating their battleground by marrying ‘beneath her’ to spite her family.

Look Back in Anger was based on John Osborne’s own marriage and it’s hard to escape the feeling that it’s an extended self-justification for unforgivable behaviour. There’s such a sense of ‘look what I have to put up with’, such a feeling that the anger is unjustified – Jimmy Porter is a man who can fly into a rage because others haven’t read the newspaper properly, a man who feels himself to be the victim, a role that Alex Evans took on with evident relish and conviction.

Today, we watch this with a different eye, an eye that sees this rage and control as abusive, and why, knowing what we know now, I for one want a different ending. Because we can only watch Look Back in Anger with a contemporary eye – we will never experience the impact it had on British theatre, we cannot understand fully how extraordinarily shocking it was, both in its subject, its language and its breaking of theatrical tradition – it’s the way in which our understanding of domestic abuse has changed that is most striking.

Young Bloods brought energy and conviction to the drama, delivering performances that hooked the audience from the start – Katy Dalton’s Alison was touching in how well she rode her character’s emotional rollercoaster and Nathan Williams as Cliff provided a welcome calm counterpoint to Jimmy’s unquenchable rage. Helena, the friend who effects Alison’s escape only to then betray her, was played by Ruby Thorogood with a cool detachment that highlighted the tumultuous relationship at the heart of the play.

A striking set and adept direction by Paul Murray ensured a thought-provoking, professional production – an unforgettable night at The Courtyard.

The last performance of Look Back in Anger is tonight, Saturday,May 7 at 7.30pm. To book, call the box office on 01432 340555 or visit courtyard.org.uk