The Entertainer

What goes around, comes around, so they say. If this relatively recent epigram should ever need a boost to its credence, it should reach out no further than to grasp John Osborne's The Entertainer and hold it up for the world to see.

Osborne wrote the play in 1957 at the request of Laurence Olivier, who had watched the playwright's Look Back In Anger in the company of Arthur Miller and had been persuaded by the American that Osborne's was a talent to be reckoned with. Osborne agreed to come up with something, and set about the task by using as the backdrop to his story something very dear to his own heart: the British Music Hall.

Osborne knew that the Music Hall was dying. He used this as an allegory to warn us that the country was going the same way. Enter the star turn: Archie Rice, failing and faded stand-up comedian with the aspirations of a Max Miller but the accomplishments of a pub clown. Olivier played the role to perfection, as would have been expected. We can never see the great man play the role on stage again, but the film, made in 1960, is available on DVD.

The thing about history repeating itself here is the fact that the play is set during the Suez Crisis of 1956. Archie Rice, on top of all his financial and emotional burdens, is struggling on under the crushing weight of knowing his son has been sent by his country to fight in a far-off place and his young life is in extreme danger. Parallels of recent conflicts involving British interests and involvements need not be explained.

This film is a masterpiece of writing and performance of the highest possible calibre. It is worth watching if only for the parts where Olivier takes to the stage with his hat, gloves and cane and rips into his do or die routine; a routine which is as much about defying the apathy of the seaside audience as any valiant attempts at comedic wizardry.

This was a play written to provoke deep thought about the nation and its way of life. But, through the skillful use of pathos pertaining to the character of Archie Rice, we are also given an insight into the nature of the human condition. Like all great works of art, it makes comment but entertains while it does so. Its themes are universal, and as such, timeless. What goes around, as they say . . .