This paper examines John Osborne’s 1957 play Look Back in Anger as a historical text that addresses specific concerns of 1950s’ British left-intellectuals and as a social text that carries both possibilities and limits in its political vision and stance. First, this paper looks at the social context of the production and reception of the play, the intellectual as well as political background of 1950s’ Britain. Then, it examines specific aspects of the play involved with and representative of the intellectual climate of the time. As a powerful expression of popular discontent and a mass cultural product, Look Back in Anger had a potential to constitute a counter public sphere to existing social and economic arrangements. This possibility for an oppositional force was, however, undercut and contained by contradictory desires within the play. Contentious politics of Anger was, it is argued, depoliticized and co-opted due to the competing claims of class, race, and gender that Jimmy Porter registers but fails to acknowledge.