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Osbourne’s music hall drama hits right note
THE ENTERTAINER
Old Vic
THE musical hall was the last bastion of Edwardian England. Brash in patriotism, rough in jingoism, vulgar, sentimental with boozy brassy ladies but with an occasional touch of class.
An operatic ballad, or a little ballet. Difficult audiences would with rousing cheers rally when the Union Jack was unfurled by a harassed stage manager. The Bedford in Camden High Street and the Collins in Islington were two of the last theatres.
The Entertainer was the second of John Osbourne’s plays performed on stage. Osbourne the original angry young man had caused an explosion with his first in theatrical London when Look Back in Anger came and invented the term kitchen-sink drama in the spring of 1956.
He wrote in 1957: “The Music Hall is dying and with it a significant part of England.” A symbolic decay takes place as Archie Rice – the comic lead in this dilapidated touring show – comes on with a desperate acceptance of failure and imminent defeat. Tired old jokes and an audience that greets him with yawning indifference and solemn apathy.
News is bought of his son’s death in the failed Suez campaign of the November 1956.
His father Billy is the old gentleman who moans about the passing Imperial parade. But insists that his coffin should be shrouded in the Union Jack. The Rice family in their theatrical digs keep going but only in one direction – towards the exit sign.
Any take on this version has to start with Sir Laurence Olivier, the crown prince of legitimate theatre, who astonished his world when he eagerly opted to play Archie. Part pub comedian, bingo caller, a man whose dead eyes shout his destiny: “Don’t clap too ‘ard, this is an old building”.
Robert Lindsay 50 years later has no need to imitate the master. His dreams are nightmares. The camp and embarrassing sexual innuendos sit heavily on him. Archie’s not a tragedy, he is a failure with painful self-realisation.
Doomed to bring down the final curtain at the Empire music hall. His son’s death forces that deadly mask to slip and when he sings the blues it is a shattering exposure of his pain.
I felt like an intruder into private grief. I was at the first night in the Royal Court Sloane Square 50 years ago and Lindsay in no way needs to steal from Larry’s box of tricks. He is too good himself with a compulsive stage presence.
Pam Ferris is Gene his wife, finding less and less consolation in the bottle. Some say it is based on Osbourne’s mother Nelly Beatrice, a bar maid, whom he was embarrassed by.
Ferris, blonde, cheerful and snappy, is an adequate foil for Archie’s twisting, turning and infidelities. As is John Normington as Billy, dying with that age which was losing self-confidence. A trinity of vanity, helplessness and resignation.
Director Sean Holmes effectively manages to capture Osbourne’s despair at the England of his day. He actually wrote a diatribe in Tribune headed Damn You England.
But his current relevance is there too. The Old Vic echoes of the sounds of Britain in 2007 with its vibrations of 1956. For this is still a riveting absorbing piece of theatre. Another boost for artistic director Kevin Spacey’s leadership.
Until May 19
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