Wed Apr 25, 2007 11:09 pm
The Entertainer
by John Osborne (Old Vic, London)
In 1983, Robert Lindsay gave one of the most extraordinary, kinetic stage performances I've ever seen, invigorating the corny old musical "Me And My Girl" on the West End and then Broadway, where he won a Tony Award for his performance. I went to see the show three times, not because it was a great show but because live performances that good don't venture along very often. Lindsay never gave the same performance twice - one year into the run he was still finding new angles from which to view the character, and still discovering physical vocabulary too.
Another fan who went to see the show three times, despite what would be his final illness, was Laurence Olivier. Robert Lindsay told "The Independent" last year: "He was quite ill, but on one of the occasions we had dinner afterwards and he did say, 'You must do "The Entertainer"'. I've kept one of his letters that actually states that,"
Now, almost 25 years later and aged 56, Lindsay finally gets to take his friend's advice and performs Archie Rice, one of the key Olivier roles (he played it in its premiere at the Royal Court in 1957 and starred in the 1960 movie version) and, on Olivier's home ground, more than vindicates the older actor's faith in the younger to take on one of the great iconic roles of modern British theatre. To the chops he already had in "Me And My Girl" he has added a lifetime of work and life experience and gives, in my view, the defining performance.
John Osborne's "The Entertainer"has always had a slightly problematic place in the canon. As the "follow up" to the earthquake that was "Look Back In Anger", the play was already operating in an unfairly long shadow. Moreover, the casting of Olivier in a play by the original "angry young man" was itself a fairly seismic event. Olivier's reasons for taking the job were, essentially, threefold - he wanted to better understand the revolution taking place in British theatre, he resented the implication that he was himself part of its stuffy old guard and, not least, he knew a good play when he read one. The actor, through no fault of his own, overshadowed the play.
But half a century later, it is not "Look Back In Anger" which has the greater claim to "classic" status, but the much more incisive, disciplined and visceral "The Entertainer". What the earlier play dramatised was the collapse of the British class system, and it's easy to see why that was such a potent thing to do in post-war, pre-Beatles Britain, But "The Entertainer" deconstructs and dismantles something much more fundamental - it is an elegy to the whole notion of Britishness, a farewell to Empire. And one can't help thinking that, if anyone realised that in 1957, when the Suez crisis had decisively exposed the Emperor's nakedness on the world stage, few dared express it in such stark terms. In the light of the iconic ironing board in "Look Back In Anger" the metaphor of the dying Music Hall tradition in the play was welcomed as another staging post in Osborne's narrative of genteel British decline.
In 2007, we come to "The Entertainer" forewarned and forearmed. Not only is the Empire dead, but its consequences follow us around still and, from all appearances, our leaders have learned next to nothing from its defeat. "Look Back In Anger" is a very good, shouty play but, even with Michael Sheen leading an NT revival a few years ago, it is no longer much more than that. "The Entertainer",on the other hand, must now be counted among the truly great plays of the 20th century, and Lindsay, his company and director Sean Holmes do it the honour of giving it its full value.
Thanks for the link, Philip. I try to organise trips to Dublin round what's on at the Abbey Theatre, so will hope for better luck later in the year.
