{"id":1352,"date":"2016-09-09T17:26:23","date_gmt":"2016-09-09T16:26:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/?p=1352"},"modified":"2016-09-11T20:29:18","modified_gmt":"2016-09-11T19:29:18","slug":"well-have-a-real-good-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/2016\/09\/well-have-a-real-good-time.html","title":{"rendered":"We’ll have a real good time"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"entertainer-kenneth-branagh\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I rarely meet a revival I don\u2019t like. Classic plays<\/a> are good for thinking: they re-reveal themselves in each new production, and choices in text and staging function as a conversation between a past and present moment \u2013 whether sympathetic discussion or knockdown argument.<\/p>\n

And then comes Rob Ashford\u2019s benighted retread of John Osborne\u2019s The Entertainer<\/em><\/a>, which doesn\u2019t so much converse with the play as let it drone on, uninterrupted and unquestioned, burying its cast and stultifying its audience.<\/p>\n

Before I rant, a big old disclaimer. I can only discuss the first half of the show, because, very unusually, I bailed at the interval. I wasn\u2019t on professional duty, I\u2019d paid for my tickets, so felt no obligation to stay. My pal last walked out of a play in 1978 (the premiere of Plenty<\/em> \u2013 she still can\u2019t forgive David Hare), but also longed to make a dash for freedom.<\/p>\n

Premiered in 1957, the play starred Laurence Olivier, famously reinventing himself as Archie Rice, a failing comic in the dying days of music hall. Archie\u2019s act trumpets tatty patriotism and hetero-lechery, but his miserable family life exposes how out of step with the times these values feel. His act dwindles, his family fractures. The empire crumbles just as everytown\u2019s Empire Theatres fall dark.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a verbose play, and needs a production that talks back. Ashford, however, is a workmanlike director who doesn\u2019t add anything interesting to a play, just helps it trundle from curtain up to curtain down without falling over. But The Entertainer<\/em> isn\u2019t neatly self-sufficient. Why disinter it? The revival, announced over a year ago, has coincided with Britain once again ingloriously losing its place in the world \u2013 but Brexit schmexit, there\u2019s no insight into what that feels like. Osborne mouths the change, but doesn\u2019t embed it: \u2018his narrative technique hardly exists,\u2019 noted the New Statesman<\/em> in 1957. Rattigan, supposedly knocked off his perch by Osborne\u2019s rise, can be equally conservative and sentimental. But juxtaposing this revival with The Deep Blue Sea<\/em><\/a> at the National makes it clear that while Osborne\u2019s subject matter (sex and socialism) may have been unusually forthright, his style now seems stale (grinding exposition, drip-drip secrets, slap-across-the-chops symbolism).<\/p>\n

Sitting at the very back of the Garrick stalls, squinting between heads at the slumberous proscenium, feels like peering back through time to a distillation of 1950s West End mediocrity. People move only when they speak, fossilise when silent. None of the Rice family behave as if they\u2019ve met before (smart cookie Greta Scacchi, playing boozy and blowsy; poor Sophie McShera, squeaking politely through the pallid role of Archie\u2019s daughter). Christopher Oram\u2019s lovingly textured backstage set \u2013 such care to make something look so shabby \u2013 turns the domestic interactions into overcooked routines. Big speeches whomp out front, while Archie\u2019s gruesome act plays like a whimpering series of little deaths.<\/p>\n

‘I have a go, lady’<\/strong><\/p>\n

The play wasn\u2019t written for Olivier, but if biographers tell true he was perfect casting. Olivier was<\/em> Archie Rice: vain, protective, vulnerable, a family man without loyalty, an actor most alive onstage. The only difference \u2013 a huge one \u2013 is that Olivier had talent.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re often told that Kenneth Branagh trots in Olivier\u2019s footsteps<\/a> (Henry V, multiple Hamlets, the last of the actor-managers), but he\u2019s a very different kind of actor. As Matt Trueman<\/a>\u00a0suggests, he retains an enduring innocence, parlaying roles through a warmth and integrity, rather than bending them to his chameleon will.<\/p>\n

Given the famous Tynan review of Olivier, it\u2019s a surprise to find Archie\u2019s ailing shtick less prominent than the mithering family drama. Branagh can\u2019t find a plausible take on Rice\u2019s act. The evening begins with a smoke-lit tap number surrounded by willowy dancers: does Archie think of himself as Gene Kelly doing Slaughter on 10th Avenue? But the idea is dropped, as Branagh lobs everything he has \u2013 guile and sinew, moue and muscle \u2013 into the leaden patter, dotted with Osborne\u2019s cringey flounces of homosexual panic. Is Rice a swivel-hipped hoofer who has lost his way? A no-hoper slogging through a no-hope medium? A satirist revealing truths through inadequacy? This Archie isn\u2019t dead behind the eyes, but blinking in panic as nothing he tries makes sense.<\/p>\n

Branagh is the wrong kind of overbearing, but it\u2019s not that you don\u2019t believe in Archie\u2019s act, it\u2019s that both chat and songs have too much point, and none at all. They have to embody small-minded Englishness (it\u2019s like watching Nigel Farage\u2019s warm-up act), but convince that there\u2019s a kind of nobility in the mere attempt to entertain. \u2018To carry on like this, year after year,\u2019 wrote the critic Harold Hobson of the first production, \u2018is also a form of heroism.\u2019 Or, as Archie likes to chirrup, \u2018I have a go, lady.\u2019<\/p>\n

How heroic is it to carry on without the faintest idea why? That\u2019s post-Suez and Brexit all over, I suppose. Masculine self-pity refuses to go out of fashion \u2013 and has rarely sounded less appealing than here.<\/p>\n

Follow David on Twitter: @mrdavidjays<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I rarely meet a revival I don\u2019t like. Classic plays are good for thinking: they re-reveal themselves in each new production, and choices in text and staging function as a conversation between a past and present moment \u2013 whether sympathetic discussion or knockdown argument. And then comes Rob Ashford\u2019s benighted retread of John Osborne\u2019s The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1353,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[34],"class_list":{"0":"post-1352","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-theatre","9":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1352"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1352\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1358,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1352\/revisions\/1358"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}