Batting between an under-attended provincial music hall and a drab family home of alcohol-fuelled bickering, John Osborne’s The Entertainer is a character study of washed-up comedian Archie Rice. Reflecting on dwindling social prospects, exploitation and callous indifference to the suffering left in one’s wake, the ironically titled play remains an engaging portrait of a man who is, by his own description, ‘dead behind the eyes’.
The structure of the play breaks up the fractious tensions of the Rice family with the tired act that Archie (Shane Richie) rolls out on stage each night. Having failed to pull in the punters yet again, Archie comes home to his neglected but dependent wife Phoebe (Sara Crowe), perpetually irascible father (Pip Donaghy) and his prodigal daughter Jean (Diana Vickers). Speculating over the fate of the enlisted son Mick, the family squabbles over their want of everything: money, education, significance, and dignity.
The music hall sketches are very poised. Shane Richie as Archie has to walk a fine line telling jokes that aren’t quite meant to land but are delivered sincerely. With the bread and butter of his material being Jim Davidson-esque casual sexism and bigotry, the routine catches the audience off-guard, inspiring nervous laughter and discomfort. The most guilt-free comedy comes from the self-deprecating pot-shots Archie takes at himself as another line deflates in the room.
The political background of the play has been updated from the Suez Crisis to the Falklands War (music hall comedy being too long dead to be plausible for the Iraq War, presumably), which proves an equally resonate allegory for social and political deprivation both past and present. With a portrait of the Queen hung on the wall, Union Jack bunting draped about the windows and jingoistic ‘Argie’-bashing sentiment being a regular topic of living room conversation, the Rice family struggle to address why they feel compelled to salute a regime that is happy for them to rot. Blind and ignorant ‘patriotism’ provides an inadequate plaster for poverty, stagnation and hopelessness. Hence all the drinking.
The use of alcohol has gone beyond a crutch for the Rice family to the point it has become a scaffold, and a shaky one at that. The drinks get them through the day but, with inhibitions lifted, the seething resentment that the family has for each other and the world around them bubbles up. Only Jean is actively pushing for some self-reflection and a move away from morbid self-interest but even she struggles to break out of long-established family habits. Though fundamentally dishonest, Archie occasionally breaks into moments of penetrating and cruel insight that cut through the drunken tirades that he and his family employ to not deal with their problems.
By no accounts uplifting, The Entertainer has a prestigious history on stage which this latest production lives up to. ★★★★☆ Fenton Coulthurst 12th November 2019
Photo credit and copyright: Helen Murray
