Personal Enemy

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.