Letterkenny Actor Joins Burlington Theatre Company for Look Back in Anger

Gregory Waters, who has acted in Letterkenny, Murdoch Mysteries and Transplant, is on a Burlington stage this fall. He plays Jimmy Porter in the Kitchen Sink Collective's Look Back in Anger, a 10-show run at West Plains United Church between September 24 and October 4.

John Osborne wrote the play in 1956. It follows Porter, a young man lashing out at the unfairness of the world, and it belongs to the kitchen sink genre the company named itself after: working class life played out in kitchens, dens and dining rooms. KSC founder Adam Iachelli said the play was a revolt against the idea that theatre belonged to the upper classes, and that it "paved the way for the kind of raw realism that our company is really inspired by."

Waters has worked with the collective before and said calling Porter an angry young man is reductive. There are points where you disagree with him and points where you empathize, he said, and today the character "feels like a character who speaks to modern discontent and frustration."

KSC member Nell Khayutin said that frustration is close to home for the cast: people who went to university or college and ended up working jobs with nothing to do with what they studied. Ten performances in ten days is a lot to carry, and cast member Amy Ryan said the short run is part of what makes live theatre what it is, an experience shared once by the people on stage and the people watching.