The Entertainer

by John Osborne

This play about the life and work of a second-rate music hall comic (brilliantly created by Sir Laurence Olivier in the original production) has become a classic of 20th century drama.

Genres: Plays, Drama, Theatre, Fiction, British Literature, Classics, 20th Century

89 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1957

About the author

People best know British playwright John James Osborne, member of the Angry Young Men, for his play Look Back in Anger (1956); vigorous social protest characterizes works of this group of English writers of the 1950s.

This screenwriter acted and criticized the Establishment. The stunning success of Look Back in Anger transformed English theatre. In a productive life of more than four decades, Osborne explored many themes and genres, writing for stage, film and television. His extravagant and iconoclastic personal life flourished. He notoriously used language of the ornate violence on behalf of the political causes that he supported and against his own family, including his wives and children, who nevertheless often gave as good as they got.

He came onto the theatrical scene at a time when British acting enjoyed a golden age, but most great plays came from the United States and France. The complexities of the postwar period blinded British plays. In the post-imperial age, Osborne of the writers first addressed purpose of Britain. He first questioned the point of the monarchy on a prominent public stage. During his peak from 1956 to 1966, he helped to make contempt an acceptable and then even cliched onstage emotion, argued for the cleansing wisdom of bad behavior and bad taste, and combined unsparing truthfulness with devastating wit.

Reviews

[Oscar Cremmen · Rating 2 out of 5]

gobshite

[Illiterate · Rating 4 out of 5]

A caustic portrait of declining Britain, clinging to music hall and empire, being angry and belligerent. Does it foreshadow Brexit voters?

[Lena , süße Maus]

shocked every time I find out that we live in a society

[Mari]

no vuelvo a reseñar algo que me mandan para clase

[Bettie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Three family generations symbolize post-war Britain's decline. Bill Nighy stars as struggling music hall artist Archie Rice Broadcast on:
BBC Radio 7, 1:00pm Saturday 5th December 2009

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/...

Brilliant production, deep worthwhile premise; shame I found it so irritating.

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Classic John Osborne, angry work, the play is based against the end of the Music Hall era and the beginning of TV and Rock and Roll.

[🌶 peppersocks 🧦 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reflections and lessons learned:
“Oh dear, Jean, you think he'll be all right, don't you? I don't know why they send these boys out to do the fighting. They're just kids, that's all. That's all he is, a kid.

Kitchen sink drama from a very different era, but unfortunately with still identifiable themes - vile language in places compared to todays understandings, but characters that show hurt and confusion from contemporary local and world conflict

[Christopher Saunders · Rating 4 out of 5]

John Osborne's The Entertainer was that playwright's second big smash, proof that the "Angry Young Man" behind Look Back in Anger wasn't going anywhere. This story is an allegory about England's imperial decline focused on the Rice family, a dynasty of seedy vaudevillians struggling to adjust to modern times. Grandfather Billy was once a brilliant musical hall star, but is now a bigoted relic who refuses to understand the world around him, including his liberal granddaughter Jean. Archie, his son, continues the family tradition in his own way - as an embarrassingly bad comedian whose cringeworthy acts are featured throughout the show, between scenes of him bickering with his family and evading the tax collector. Osborne's play shows its age in numerous ways: written in 1957, the recent Suez Crisis is a major plot point as Archie's soldier son is deployed to fight there, making some of the dramaturgy and messages feel dated. Some of the family scenes are a bit repetitive and forced, with Billy, Archie, his wife Phoebe and Jean butt heads over differing world views and private grief (Phoebe is Archie's second wife, and thus stepmother to the headstrong Jean). Even so, the play retains considerable power through the characterization of Archie, a man cringingly aware of his failure (as evidenced by his famous monologue about his "dead eyed" rapport with his indifferent audience) but who soldiers on just the same, as if nothing has changed since his father's day. Adapted into a solid film version with Laurence Olivier, who played Archie on stage, along with an Americanized version starring Jack Lemmon in the '70s; more recently revived on stage with Kenneth Branagh in the lead.

[James Evans · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was hoping to see it live but John Hurt got I'll and withdrew from the play so I didn't go. Still I had it with me -I tend to read the plays before seeing them- so I read it anyway.

I like theatre a lot although I'm not an actress or a student of any kind of arts. I feel a bit guilty about 2 starts but 3 starts are books/plays "I liked it" and although I didn't dislike it, I felt there was nothing particularly remarkable about this play. Usually you find something; a character, some lines, the plot, etc. This was just a regular story that I'll probably forget in a few months time.

I trust that the acting is what makes of this play something memorable. As for reading it, I have to give it two starts because as I said before, although I didn't dislike it, I cannot really compare it with other books and plays I gave 3 stars.

[Tosh]

I just saw the Tony Richardson film version of this play, and it knocked me sideways. i just got back from London, and due to a project i am working on, I think a lot about music hall theaters and the theater themselves. They're almost characters in a play as well. The buildings (that still exist) are beautiful, but also very soulful and sad.

[Robert · Rating 2 out of 5]

Just so-so.

[Ana Garcia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Todo lo que sea una crítica a la sociedad británica será aprobado en esta cuenta

[Anton Segers · Rating 2 out of 5]

Zelfs in de best mogelijke omstandigheden - als BBC hoorspel met de door mij aanbeden Bill Nighy in de hoofdrol - is deze The Entertainer van John Osborne niet tot het einde vol te houden.
Enkele redenen?
Het is een doorslagje van Look Back in Anger. De protagonist is een gevoelloos abject subject. Alle personages kletsen maar door of verwoorden hun eigen emoties, zodat je als publiek niks te doen hebt.
Niemand of niets in de plot evolueert.
Ik denk dat ik met Osborne stop.

[Matthew · Rating 4 out of 5]

John Osborne’s works took the pulse of post-war Britain. Perhaps they did so too much, and many of the attitudes held by the characters now seem dated and harder for us to reach now. Even the nicest characters in The Entertainer hold views of casual bigotry concerning women, gay people and ethnic minorities that make difficult reading or viewing today.

It is said that The Entertainer was a response to Look Back in Anger, with Osborne writing this time about an Angry Middle-Aged Man instead. Not that Archie Rice, the anti-hero of The Entertainer, is really angry about anything. As he tells his daughter, Jean:

“I'm dead behind these eyes. I'm dead, just like the whole inert, shoddy lot out there. It doesn't matter because I don't feel a thing, and neither do they.”

This is the essence of Archie Rice’s character. He is a failing performer who is desperately trying to keep the music hall open, and he is not too scrupulous about how he does it. He openly boasts about not having paid taxes for 19 years. His songs in the music hall tell us what we need to know about him: “Why should I care?” “Number One’s the only one for me.”

He makes slighting comments about his wife, which is standard music-hall banter, but it seems that he is not much better with women in his personal life. He tells his daughter Jean that her mother left him after she walked in on Archie and Phoebe (now Jean’s stepmother) having sex.

Archie plans to leave Phoebe for a younger woman, but these plans are scuppered by his father Billy, who informs the other woman that Archie is married. Archie takes advantage of Billy’s guilt to get the old man to return to the stage to restore his flagging theatre, but the exertion proves too much for the older man, and he dies.

At the end, Archie is offered the opportunity to escape to Canada by his brother Bill, but he seems to change his mind and decide to stay in England, knowing this will probably lead to his arrest. It would be nice to think that Archie is trying to atone for his actions, but this suggestion is made in his usual flippant manner.

Archie’s speeches are all delivered in a phoney music-hall patter, even when he is with his family. He lacks sincerity and redeeming features, and even his frankness towards his daughter Jean does not endear him to her. Perhaps she recognises that his self-honesty is not accompanied by any self-loathing or remorse.

It has been said that The Entertainer is a metaphor for England at the time – a phoney, decaying place that dreams of past glories, and loathes the new values that are replacing the old ones. The Rices hate Brother Bill’s generosity which has saved them in the past in the same way that they bite the hand of the welfare state that supports them. At root is a resentment of receiving any help from people who they fear are looking down on them.

Other values threatening them are the new open-minded attitudes towards gender, sexuality and race, and there are plenty of unpleasant off-the-cuff remarks uttered by just about everyone. Words such as ‘wogs’ are bandied about here.

What is unclear is where John Osborne sits in this. A man of avowed left-wing views, Osborne has a similar willingness to mourn for an ideal world of the past that probably never really existed. Archie Rice may be an appalling man in many ways, but Osborne has a sneaking pity for him when this relic of the old stage finally vanishes forever, leaving only the music.

[Nick Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the second of John Osborne’s early work that I’ve read in the past few weeks. The Entertainer is one of his most respected plays, but, as with Inadmissible Evidence, I couldn’t help feeling that its fame was partly due to its being the right play at the right time: it seems to sum up the state of England in the late 1950s...and it benefited from a strong first production, famously featuring one of Laurence Olivier’s most charismatic performances. Jean Rice visits her family: her father, Archie Rice, is an old Music Hall performer, now playing at seaside resorts, but it becomes evident that he was never that talented; his father, Billy, was a more notable figure in his day; his son Frank follows on, but isn’t a performer; his wife Phoebe doesn’t seem to do much, other than put up with Archie. Osborne’s characters tend to be verbose and here they all seem to talk without listening. We see some of Archie’s worn out acts, the bad jokes and bad songs, but even off stage he never seems to stop performing. This is a family and a way of life that is at the end of its tether, fortified by booze and deceit. Jean, although part of the family, is the outsider. What gives the play a greater impact are the parallels between the decline of the family, the decline of the music hall and the decline of Great Britain as imperial power. Billy lives in a state of nostalgia for his youth, when all women were ladies and the Empire ruled the waves – he sees the world around him as little more than decline. Archie peppers his act with patriotic songs that celebrate the Empire and British character. But the missing figure from the family is Mick, Archie and Phoebe’s second son, who is in the army – and they hear he has been captured by the enemy. (Which military campaign this is is not clarified, but the Suez crisis would have been in the minds of the contemporary audience: symbolically this is when the old power of the British Empire was shown as broken backed.) But, in a way, the play makes its point and then just keeps making it – this is a country in decline...and there’s nothing much more to be said. Archie is desperately trying to revive his career, but failure looms. This is a family/nation held together by little more than desperation. Jean is the outsider – her relationship with her fiancé, Graham, is in crisis. This came about because she went to a demonstration in Trafalgar Square (for the contemporary audience this would have implied the anti-government demonstrations about the Suez campaign) and Graham objected: Graham, like Archie, largely patronizes his partner. I suppose Jean offers a certain hope for the future: while everyone else seems trapped by the past, she shows a certain potential for new attitudes and a new future, but by the end she is becoming increasingly bitter with her family/nation. Osborne is generally classified as an Angry Young Man, but while there is anger in the play, there is little sense of hope.

[Steven Voorhees · Rating 4 out of 5]

John Osborne's plays portray the Angry Young Man -- the embattled, boiling male protagonist wasting everything around him. In his music hall melodrama THE ENTERTAINER, it's the alienated alpha male-cum-sad old man (a variation on the angry young one) who estranges. A metaphor for late 1950's Britain (tired, spent and in crisis), it's the story Archie Rice, a faded soft shoe song-and-dance man facing hard familial and financial realities. Conceited yet charming, Archie's on-stage (and off) plights form the play's dramatic structure. His sunny but faux facade's contrasts against his family's dark truths. Archie's "[f]ace [is] held open by a grin and dead behind the eyes." The same doomed disparity engulfs the Rice family. Osborne's characters are miffed and melancholy. THE ENTERTAINER could even be a sequel to LOOK BACK IN ANGER, Osborne's tale of emasculated manhood. Jimmy Porter (LOOK's hero) has morphed into Archie Rice. Sadly, though, Jimmy hasn't aged gracefully.

[Lily · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here we are, we're alone in the universe, there's no God, it just seems that it all began by something as simple as sunlight striking on a piece of rock. And here we are. We've only got ourselves. Somehow, we've just got to make a go of it. We've only ourselves.

I wish you'd stop yelling, I can't hear myself shout.

Don't clap too hard - it's a very old building.

I'm dead behind these eyes. I'm dead, just like the whole inert, shoddy lot out there. It doesn't matter because I don't feel a thing, and neither do they.

[Adela63 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant Sir Kenneth!!! And brilliant Gretta Scacchi!!!! (cannot say same of the Jean's voice though...)

KENNETH BRANAGH, PHIL DUNSTER, GAWN GRAINGER, JONAH HAUER-KING, CRISPIN LETTS, SOPHIE McSHERA, GRETA SCACCHI

[Mary · Rating 3 out of 5]

A strange period piece, at a time when England was struggling with its post-colonial descent as a world power. The military action alluded to may have been the Suez crisis? Blighted working classes, anesthetizing themselves with gin...I will have to mull it over for a bit.

[Nadine Wilmschen · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great play. Can't wait to see it on stage.

[Luna · Rating 1 out of 5]

A bitterly funny portrait of a man and a nation in decline.


The Entertainer by John Osborne tells the story of Archie Rice, a music-hall comedian living in a fractured family and a crumbling society. Archie makes audiences laugh on stage, but in real life, he is defeated, empty, and trapped in utter meaninglessness. Within the story, family crises intertwine with England’s political crises (the Suez Crisis and the decline of the Empire). Archie symbolizes the moral decay and downfall of the middle generation. The play is less a simple family story and more a mirror reflecting British society during the decline of its empire.

For me, reading the text felt like touching the shadow of a theater performance; sometimes confusing and not entirely impactful. Honestly, I think seeing it staged would have affected me much more. Still, within the text itself, one can hear the voice of a failing generation and nation—a voice that remains strangely familiar even today.


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«نمایشنامه‌ای درباره سقوط یک نسل و پایان یک عصر»

"سرگرمی‌ساز" (The Entertainer) جان آزبرن، داستان آرچی رایس، یک کمدین کاباره‌ای رو روایت می‌کنه که در خانواده‌ای آشفته و جامعه‌ای در حال فروپاشی زندگی می‌کنه. آرچی کمدینی که روی صحنه تماشاگر رو می‌خندونه، اما در زندگی واقعی شکست‌خورده، بی‌روح و گرفتار پوچی مطلقه. در دل ماجرا، بحران خانوادگی با بحران سیاسی انگلستان (جنگ سوئز و افول امپراتوری) گره می‌خوره. آرچی نماد ابتذال و سقوط اخلاقی نسل میانه‌ست‌. نمایشنامه بیشتر از اینکه یک قصه‌ی خانوادگی باشه، آینه‌ای از جامعه‌ی بریتانیا در دوران افول امپراتوریه.

برای من، تجربه‌ی خوندن متن مثل لمس کردن سایه‌ی یک تئاتر بود؛ گاهی گیج‌کننده و نه آن‌قدر اثرگذار. راستش رو بخواید، فکر می‌کنم اگر اجرای صحنه‌ای نمایش رو می‌دیدم خیلی بیشتر تحت تأثیر قرار می‌گرفتم. با این حال، در دل همین متن هم می‌شه صدای شکست یک نسل و یک ملت رو شنید؛ صدایی که هنوز هم به طرز غریبی آشناست.

[Joyce · Rating 5 out of 5]

like chaplin (whose limelight is one of the only ones of his films i think truly great) osborne makes great art out of the decline of what was (from the evidence presented here) a degraded and almost worthless form in itself

[وائل المنعم · Rating 3 out of 5]

مسرحية جيدة لاوزبورن على مستوى الحبكة ورسم الشخصيات، فقط الحوار أحيانا يبدو ضعيفا وغير ملائم على عكس مونولوجات البطل، ولا اعرف هل هو عيب ترجمة أم النص الأصلي، شخصية الزوجة كانت مميزة للغاية في طبيعيتها وتطورها مع الأحداث واختلاف نظرة القارئ لها بين بداية المسرحية ونهايتها.

[Keen Reader · Rating 1 out of 5]

Capturing the music-hall era and indeed the British Empire in decline, this dark and downbeat tale hasn't really aged all that well. Although not terrible, I couldn't find anything particularly funny or memorable about it to recommend it to anyone either. But hey! each to their own.

[Lewis Isbell · Rating 2 out of 5]

Do you ever get me?

[Ahmed Yousri ataweyya · Rating 3 out of 5]

تمت ترجمتها بعنوان (المسامر) وصدرت عن سلسلة روائع المسرح العالمي في الستينيات بعد قليل من حرب السويس …
انها قصة انهيار الرجال الكبار الذين بنوا الامبراطورية .

[Margot · Rating 2 out of 5]

no he entendido nada, corazón

[David]

Few characters could be more disparate than Archie Rice, Martin Luther, Bill Maitland, and Jimmy Porter. Yet they all share this: the world into which they were born no longer works for them. Osborne details, in a variety of time settings and situations, the plight of the man who doesn’t fit. These are not easy plays, but they are important.