Theatre
End of the pier entertainment
Published 19 March 2007
Robert Lindsay dispels the ghost of Olivier in John Osborne's classic
The Entertainer Old Vic, London SE1
John Osborne's The Entertainer is one of those plays whose arrival was so monumentally fêted that you fear for any subsequent productions. When it first opened at the Royal Court in April 1957, Laurence Olivier, then Britain's most famous actor, was given the lead role of Archie Rice. Olivier, the classical actor nonpareil, whose dashing Henry V had symbolised British wartime pluck, playing a failed seaside entertainer? But the casting paid off; it was a career-defining moment, and the image of Olivier as the hopeless Rice in a jaunty bowler hat has hovered somewhat spectrally over The Entertainer ever since. Others have tried it - Corin Redgrave, Michael Pennington, Peter Bowles - but it is still the role known by its association with Larry.
Until Robert Lindsay, that is, in this production subtly directed by Sean Holmes. Lindsay steps into a pair of natty co-respondent shoes, dons a sky-blue suit and prances into the spotlight, twirling hat and cane with unshakeable assurance, grace and enough confidence to shake the Ghost of Larry quite out of the building. He's almost too good at the music hall, in fact, to act a third-rate song and dance man, and I was relieved to find that he seemed to have built some mistakes into his shtick.
The curtain rises on the Rice living room. Billy Rice, Archie's dad, is settling down with his slippers, two bottles of beer and the newspaper. Anthony Lamble's gloomy set, crowded with lumpen hand-me-down furniture, sets the tone. The back wall is painted with hundreds of white slashes, as if the room were in a permanent rain cloud. Even when his grand-daughter Ruth turns up by surprise, Billy doesn't cheer up.
But then this is a seaside town in Britain, 1956, and the celebratory bunting from V-J Day has long been put away. There is a political farrago going on in the Middle East (Suez). Young men are dying thousands of miles away in an obscure desert. Ruth tells Billy that she has been at a demonstration in Trafalgar Square. Archie's wife, Phoebe, whose son Mick has been captured in Egypt, only reinforces the mood. "Everything's doing badly," she says, stamping around with energetic desperation.
The action moves between an increasingly drink-sodden, warring Rice family in the living room and the world of the music hall, where Archie performs in a glittering world of striptease, Union Jacks, ribaldry and song. Archie has a Sid James-like laugh and every one of his gags is accompanied by a crash-bang from the percussionist. Until he gets home, that is, where behind the patter we find a man "dead behind the eyes", who believes only in "women and draught Bass". His is a world where "getting on" is about evading the taxman, not focusing on a career parabola. Chances are given only to those with contacts, or education. Those whose nuptials are not announced in the Court Circular must just get used to living with their disappointment. "Nobody gives a damn about anything," says Rice. Archie Rice is a man walking through a life of failure with open eyes, and Lindsay's achievement is to make us realise this.
He is helped greatly by The Entertainer being a serious three-act drama that also gives flesh to the secondary roles. John Normington as Billy Rice, a faded star of Edwardian music hall who believes that it is "better to have been a has-been, than a never-was", puts up a quavery defiance to his feckless son (but is also himself a racist bore), while Pam Ferris as Phoebe doesn't exactly steal the show, but certainly shares in Lindsay's glory.
The Entertainer was originally read as a state-of-the-nation play. It still could be, and not just because of the Middle East plot line. The sense of powerlessness, of promise denied, is palpable in British society 50 years on. Phoebe may be untutored, but she knows that missing out on education has meant she has in effect missed out on life. Yet, for all its nihilism, there is something irrepressible about the knowing scepticism with which Rice tempers his soft-shoe shuffle, and something moving about the way his beleaguered wife waits for him at the end.
For further info and booking details visit www.oldvictheatre.com
Pick of the week
Attempts On Her Life
Lyttelton Theatre, London SE1
Revival of Martin Crimp's play about late 20th-century obsessions.
John Gabriel Borkman
Donmar Warehouse, London WC2
Directed by Michael Grandage, this is Ibsen at his most grandiose. Starring Ian McDiarmid.
Macbeth
West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds
Ian Brown follows his directorial successes in Twelfth Night and Hamlet with the Scottish play.
Post this article to
We want to encourage people to comment on our content and to exchange views with other readers and hope this will be done on a courteous basis. However, if you encounter posts which are offensive please let us know by emailing comments@newstatesman.co.uk and we will take swift action where necessary.
