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An awesome and ridiculous film that leaves you thrilled beyond the point of your natural endurance
2012
Theatre
The show has suddenly become quite wonderful, and the galvanising factor is the terrific stage debut of Melanie C
Blood Brothers
Music
The British pop music industry may be eating itself but if Muse are the pick of what it can offer the world in 2010 then British music is in rude health indeed
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I was smitten by both Gilberts enormous luxuriant moustache and the intelligence and nuance of this highly entertaining play
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Always been a fan but never seen them live. I was ecstatic to be part of this epic event. WOW!
London,
Nicholas de Jongh's rating
Reader rating
Dir: Sean Holmes.
Cast: Robert Lindsay, Pam Ferris, Emma Cunniffe, David Dawson, David Baron
Description: Major staging of John Osborne's familial drama, marking the play's 50th anniversary. Robert Lindsay stars as music-hall comedian Archie Rice, a man driven by a desperation to be as good as his successful father, and Pam Ferris stars as his shamed wife.
Trains: Tube/BR: Waterloo 
Phone: 0870060 6628
Website: www.oldvictheatre.com
Extra info: Food, Pub
Immaculate timing: Robert Lindsay as Archie Rice at the Old Vic
Britain's misbegotten role in the invasion of Iraq, and the rising tally of our soldiers killed over there, lend an arresting topicality to John Osborne's 50-year-old, rotten-state-of-the-nation drama. I was caught in a haze of nostalgia, amusement and high emotion.
The Entertainer, in which the vituperative playwright brilliantly likened the United Kingdom to the clapped-out, decaying world of music hall, has dated and matured as well as vintage cheese.
In his pale blue suit, with a darker shade of blue jokes in his armoury, Robert Lindsay makes that third-rate song, tap-dance and smutty-patter man, Archie Rice, an irresistible comic turn.
Timing immaculate, this camp vulgarian with a cane, metaphorically touches up the audience to the manner brought up.
There he stands, a touch of Frankie Howerd and Donald Sinden in his voice, a caddish Terry Thomas look to his leering mouth.
With his tatty showmanship on the halls, Lindsay almost manages to paper over The Entertainer's structural flaws, its redundant third act and sentimentalities which peak when Archie reacts to news of his son's death by singing the blues. Lindsay falls short, though, when it comes to Archie's underlying sense of anger and despair.
Osborne lists his scenes as if they were music hall acts. And Sean Holmes's over-statuesque production, with designer Anthony Lamble's huge green proscenium curtains and a blown-up photo of a seaside resort, makes it seem as if The Entertainer moves between a music hall stage and the scene of a Fifties drama.
The precise date is November 1956, when Anthony Eden's Conservative government had launched its attack upon Suez, an imperial act of aggression analogous to Blair's on Iraq and potentially even more dangerous.
Stage censorship, still wielded with the Lord Chamberlain's fierce blue pencil in the Fifties, meant that Osborne could barely debate politics in The Entertainer, yet that canal still inundates the play to direct, deadly, dramatic effect.
For it is the capture and subsequent murder of Archie's soldier son that gives the play its waiting-game tension and strengthens Osborne's critique of Britain's reluctance to accept that its days of imperial glory were over.
The grief and bemusement that afflicts the Rice family will speak directly to those today whose relations and friends died serving in Iraq.
Beyond these hard facts of life and death, Osborne sets Archie Rice's failing music hall career in parallel with family life in lodgings.
Here, an atmosphere of bickering resentment and ennui prevail.
Archie's father, Billy, played to comic, plaintive perfection by John Normington, is presented as a far superior sort of music hall artist.
He keeps both his genteel feet firmly planted in his adored Edwardian past and keeps drawing attention to where he stands. He rails against foreigners and lost standards of young women and civilisation.
This middle-class gentleman embodies Osborne's sentimental, Tory vision of Edward VII's England, when empire building was still a popular trade.
Pam Ferris in vehement emotional form as Archie's lower-class wife, Jean, whom he intends to trade in for a much younger model, chatters nervously to her listless step-daughter.
A grand, stinging pathos is achieved with the family's communal music hall turn, when Ferris sings for the boy she loves in the gallery, before catastrophe strikes.
The Entertainer paints an enthralling picture, both grim and comically captivating, of Britain in the grip of escapist fantasy.
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
The character of Archie Rice has no redeeming qualities, yet Robert Lindsay manages to instill a modicom of charm, especially when he's performing the 'stand-up' routines at the seedy, end of the pier theatre. We almost believe there's a talented 'song and dance' man trying to get out, even though Osborne's script never implies this is so. Robert Lindsay adeptly and effortlessly moves from comedy links to more serious domestic scenes and, inspite of his character's despicable nature, the audience is with him all the way. Archie's final performance, and the final scene in the play, is Lindsay's most poignant. Pam Ferris in the role of Phoebe is a sympathetic contrast to Archie, although she sensitively reveals her character's underlying unhappiness, displaying characteristics that would obviously irritate a man like Archie. All the cast members endeavour to convey a sense of time and place and, whilst the play is clearly set in 1956, there are resonances still relevant fifty years on. The Entertainer is definitely top of the bill entertainment!
- Julie, London, UK
I am traveling back to the UK and Ireland next week (2-1/2 week vacation) and will be seeing Mr. Lindsay's performance next Saturday night. I eagerly await it, and, since I know and greatly admire Olivier's performance in the film version, to see how his interpretation differs from Olivier's.
- James Jeffrey Paul, Raleigh, North Carolina, USA
I am flying over in May to see the show-can't wait! I heard Emma Cunniffe is an incredible actress and should be given major movie roles. Then again, she is my baby sister...
- Nigel Cunniffe, New Jersey USA
I'd be interested to know where Mr de J was sitting. From the third row of the Dress Circle, with the honourable exceptions of Pam Ferris & John Normington, it took a real effort to hear the lines and I went home exhausted from the effort. Robert Lindsay (as Archie "offstage") and the rest of the cast appeared to be projecting for a studio space not the Old Vic.
- Km, London
