The Entertainer by John Addison John Osborne

On the far side of middle age, Archie Rice lives in a British seaside resort with his father, retired successful vaudevillian Billy Rice, second wife Phoebe Rice, and doting son Frank Rice. Following in retired Billy's footsteps, Archie is a song-and-dance music hall headliner, with Frank supporting his dad as his shows' stage manager. The waning popularity of Archie's type of shows, a dying form of entertainment, is not helped by Archie's stale second rate material, which brings in small unappreciative crowds. Archie clings to his long held lifestyle, including heavy drinking and chronic infidelity, of which Phoebe is aware. What Archie has not told his offspring is that Phoebe was his mistress while he was still married to their now deceased mother. His want to be a music hall headliner is despite his financial problems, he an undischarged bankrupt who now signs Phoebe's name to everything. Phoebe wants them to escape this life to something more stable, such as the offer from her...

This recording is taken from the original cast recording at The Palace Theatre (London) September 17, 1957

John Osborne wrote his play "The Entertainer" specifically at the request of Sir Laurence Olivier, who wanted the "Angry Young Man" of the British theater to create a vehicle for him, one of the figures of the British Establishment, against whom Osborne was rebelling. Olivier hoped that appearing in the Osborne play would make him relevant to a new generation of theatergoers. It proved to be one of Olivier's greatest stage successes (the Colonial Theatre in Boston, Massachusetts, has a plaque on the outside wall commemorating Olivier's appearance there during the U.S. tour of the play), while this movie won him the sixth of his ten acting Academy Award nominations. His performance as Archie Rice, as well as his marriage to his young co-star Dame Joan Plowright, one of the leading actresses of the new wave of British thespians, did keep Olivier contemporary with the new leaders of the British theater. Conversely, his generational contemporaries, including Sir John Gielgud, Sir Ralph Richardson, and playwright Terence Rattigan, started to seem stout and old-fashioned, as they failed to keep up with the theatrical evolution (Gielgud countered with the role of Julian in Edward Albee's obscure "Tiny Alice" on Broadway in 1962, but outside of the classical repertoire, he and Richardson did not recover their cachet as actors in contemporary plays until the mid 1970s, in Harold Pinter's "No Man's Land".) Olivier helped shepherd the new generation of actors, actresses, directors, and playwrights as the head of the National Theatre in the 1960s and early 1970s.

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