Robert Lindsay stars in 'The Entertainer.'
An Old Vic presentation in association with Old Vic Prods. of a play in three acts by John Osborne. Directed by Sean Holmes.
No one writes tirades better than John Osborne. One year after the class-conscious rage of his 1956 debut "Look Back in Anger," he proved he was no one-hit-wonder with "The Entertainer." A clarion call eviscerating post-war Britain, it catapulted Laurence Olivier from classical actor to modern star in the role of faded and singularly jaded vaudevillian Archie Rice. Fifty years later, with Robert Lindsay stepping into Olivier's shoes, Osborne's signature state-of-the-nation rants remain startling. Sean Holmes' fitful production for the Old Vic, however, fails to lift the furious, prescient commentary to the level of genuinely engrossing tragedy.
The play's center -- not to be confused with a heart -- is Archie, who is fighting losing battles on and off stage. The British music hall tradition of vaudeville is on the way out, and his act now appears with a tawdry nude revue. Furthermore, he hasn't paid income tax in 20 years and the tax inspectors are after him.
Archie's self-disgust, now at a toxic level, infects his tired stage act. Sequences from his act are intercut with the narrative of his equally frayed home life in November 1956.
While Britain struggles to emerge from the shameful foreign policy manipulations of the Suez Crisis, Archie's son Mick is taken prisoner in the Middle East. His other son Frank (David Dawson), who was imprisoned for being a conscientious objector, began a a dead-end job as a hospital porter after his release.
Hope for the future is repped by Archie's intelligent daughter Jean (Emma Cunniffe) who, living away from home, has a modern political awareness the others lack.
A poised Cunniffe fills Jean with zeal. She acts as a necessary corrective to her family's self-centered misanthropy (and the play's misogyny), most strongly outlined by Archie's aged father Billy (John Normington), who rails against the collapse of society's standards. In Normington's supremely grumpy turn, Billy exists on a permanently rolling boil of resentment and deluded nostalgia.
The play charts Archie's -- and thus the country's -- downward spiral, a defining mood seized upon by Lindsay.
Given his Olivier- and Tony-winning star turn in "Me and My Girl," it's no surprise the actor takes to Archie like a duck to water. Where his Bill Snibson was the embodiment of cheeky charm, his Archie is all smarm, whether tossing off masterly hat-and-cane dance steps or seedily sending up auds.
Formerly a music hall, the historic Old Vic theater is, in many ways, the perfect venue for the play, yet Holmes' dogged production weighs the action down.
Anthony Lamble's design (which too dutifully follows original stage directions) has Archie's music hall numbers played downstage against a frontcloth. The upstage main room of the family home is edged by a faded set of theater curtains, over-earnestly pointing up what a performance this all is. Through a translucent gauze back wall, auds see glimpses of an intermittently lit backdrop of the Brighton seafront outside.
Neat in conceptual terms, in practice the set is problematic. Scenes of family warfare, the bulk of the play, are played out in a space that has no internal logic. Shapeless, with furniture merely fanned out for decent sightlines, it robs the actors of a necessary anchoring reality. Marooned in a drab wide space without walls, all the cast's energies are dissipated.
The sets also slow everything down. Archie's act needs to be seen in contrast with the reality of down-at-heel English life. Thus the play cries out for swift, fluid transition, but, unfortunately, as each of the 13 scenes ends, the atmosphere deflates while the set changes take place.
The strongest emotions come from Pam Ferris' magnificent turn as Archie's much-abused wife Phoebe. Bottle-blonde above a less-than active brain, she boldly ricochets between certainty and nervousness.
Ferris' stoicism makes Phoebe truly moving, which stands in worrying contrast to Lindsay. Archie is a bull-headed anti-hero who refuses to care for others, but Lindsay ultimately shrinks from showing the man as the wreck the play demands. The necessary pathos remains dormant.
As an argumentative analysis of Britain struggling on a post-war slide, "The Entertainer" still has plenty to say. In Holmes' hands, however, it lacks the power to move.
Sets and costumes, Anthony Lamble; lighting, Peter Mumford; original music, John Addison; musical direction, Alan Gout; arrangements and additional music, Steven Edis; choreography, Paul Harris; production stage manager, Dominic Fraser. Opened, reviewed March 7, 2007. Running time: 2 HOURS, 40 MIN.
Contact David Benedict at
benedictdavid@mac.com
Date in print: Mon., Mar. 19, 2007