Simon Collins reviews The Entertainer by John Osborne at the Richmond Theatre...
OUR VERDICT
Though a classic of the British post-war theatre, The Entertainer has been fading from relevance ever since.
This new production gamely attempts to breathe fresh life into the story, updating it 25 years to … 1982. Were he alive today the notoriously quarrelsome Osborne would be 90 years old, no doubt still regarded as the quintessential angry young man?
Unless you are in your 60s or older the nostalgia factor will be lost on you, the more so since this is a state-of-England play reflecting on the specifics of the contemporary period, not on enduring themes.
Since Osborne and the other “angry young men” were responding to the immediate social and political crises of that time the question arises as to whether those arouse any passion for us. The answer is – sort-of because the predicament of the main character, Archie Rice, has a perennial quality.
The play was first produced in 1957, set in the time of the Suez crisis the previous year. The two overriding issues of the day were the sudden unexpected ending of Britain’s four centuries of imperial power, and the malaise of outdated social arrangements in a country entering the present era without an identity.
These issues are embodied in the washed-up figure of Archie Rice the comedian whose old-fashioned music-hall act (remember Max Miller?) no longer has any edge or point.
The gin-soaked Rice family banters and quarrels as in a gritty soap opera except that Osborne’s dialogue is more marvellously vituperative. Phoebe, Archie’s second wife, (Sara Crowe) plainly finds him oppressive and escapes into the bottle when not at the pictures; daughter Jean (Diana Vickers) protests in Trafalgar Square against the war while her brother Mick is in the army fighting it; dad Billy (Pip Donaghy) is also a washed-up comedian but happier with his lot throwing around racist comments and puzzled at the changing role of women. Frank, another son (played by Christopher Bonwell) is quietly musical and has served six months in prison as a conscientious objector.
The cast is impeccable, you could not wish for better actors.
Star of the show, of course, is the immensely experienced Shane Richie, who cut his teeth as an old-fashioned comic in a holiday camp, became famous in a long-running washing powder advert, spent years as a game show host, years as Alfie Moon in Eastenders, years in countless TV, film and theatre roles.
He’s a fabulous singer as well. He carries the entire play easily. If anything he is too lovable even when lugubrious. It is hard to see in him the bitterness and sheer exhaustion of the has-been without a future. The part demands buckets of pathos.
Director Sean O’Connor impressively pulls the production together, with a little rewriting to update it. The set–design is a character in its own right, a near perfect recreation of a 1970/80s living room. In such rooms family life unfolded through the decades.
However jaded the Falklands era seems now, in fact, Britain had already moved on considerably from the Suez crisis a generation earlier.
Americanisation had altered the official outlook, and the counter-culture had transformed the social culture. Hippies and punks and the changes they signified had come and gone. Thatcher’s Falkland’s War was a dull echo of British imperialism’s last hurrah at Suez when we invaded Egypt.
In the end, the Rice family gather around a coffin draped in the Union Jack (as people then called it). In 1957 this image was intended to amaze and shock, representing not just the family member lost but the demise of a coherent nation.
Today, when incoherence reigns and nostalgia is humorous, the power of such symbols is feint indicating how much the play belongs where it is rooted, in the 1950s.
Most likely, as the 21st century rolls on with its own urgent global issues, Osborne’s angry entertainment will be politely forgotten.
Theatre: Richmond Theatre, The Green, Richmond, TW9 1QJ
Dates: Monday 25th to Saturday 30th November 2019 (www.atgtickets.com_
