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written by John Osborne, directed by Jackie Maxwell

Shaw Festival, Studio Theatre, Niagara-on-the-Lake

August 15-September 20, 2009

"Why You Should Care"

The Shaw Festival inaugurates the Studio Theatre, an exciting new performance space, with “The Entertainer”, the first play by John Osborne that the Shaw Festival has staged.  The Studio Theatre is otherwise known and used as Rehearsal Hall 1 and has become the space where the one-acts for the annual Directors Project are staged.  This is the first time the space has been open to the general public.  With only 176 seats it is the smallest of the Festival’s four venues and has been configured as an alley theatre with the audience on two sides of a long, narrow performing area.  

It is an excellent venue for “The Entertainer”, which alternates scenes of domestic disharmony in the Rice family’s front parlour with scenes of Archie Rice, the music hall performer of the title, in excerpts from his routines.  The main oddity is that Peter Hartwell’s design for this configuration places two stages at either end, suggesting that Archie is performing at more than one venue during the course of the action which is not necessarily the case.       

On the Shaw Festival website, Artistic Director Jackie Maxwell says, “Our production of ‘The Entertainer’ deliberately steps outside of the Shaw Festival’s mandate representing a continuum of provocative playwriting that includes Shaw, Noel Coward and now John Osborne.”  In fact, “The Entertainer” though first performed in 1957, is not really so far outside the Festival’s mandate.  First of all, given that Shaw died in 1950, John Osborne, born in 1929 is one of Shaw’s contemporaries.  Second, Osborne uses the decline of the music hall as a metaphor for the decline of Great Britain.  Musical hall flourished approximately from 1830-1960 which completely encompasses Shaw’s lifespan.  Although Osborne is known to have abjured Shaw and all he represented, he is, as Guardian theatre critic Michael Billington points out in his excellent note, not really as unlike Shaw as he liked to think.  Both were ardent exploders of social and national pretences and myths.  As Billington mentions, Shaw uses the decline of the house in “Heartbreak House” of 1919 to represent the decline of Britain into the abyss of World War I.  In fact, the received wisdom in Britain that “everything changed” after Osborne’s “Look Back in Anger” of 1956 has done a lot of harm to Britain’s appreciation of Shaw and its own drama of the first half of the 20th century.  Indeed, because of the Shaw Festival, Canada now has a greater knowledge of Shaw and plays of that period than do the British and has developed a tradition of how to perform Shaw that Britain has not.  In September this year in London, for example, “To True to Be Good” will receive its first performance in Britain since 1975, whereas the Festival has already staged it here three times since then.    

In “The Entertainer” we meet the Rice family, whose only method of dealing with each other and with life is by anaesthetizing themselves with large quantities of alcohol.  Billy Rice, Archie’s father and a former music hall performer himself, spends most of his day in his favourite chair reading the newspaper and decrying what he finds there.  We meet Archie’s second wife Phoebe, who works at Woolworth's and accepts that Archie’s philandering as part of his being male.  The younger generation are represented by Archie’s daughter Jean, who has come to pay a surprise visit.  She has broken off her engagement with her boyfriend Graham and taken part in a rally at Trafalgar Square against Britain’s involvement in the Suez Crisis.  Jean’s brother Frank was the first to dissent from the family’s knee-jerk conservatism by refusing to be conscripted, a decision that cost him six months in jail.  All, however, are united in their worry over Frank’s brother Mick, who did join the army and who has been been taken prisoner oversees.

One of the main reasons “The Entertainer” continues to be revived is that Osborne has created such a complex, fascinating if ultimately repugnant character in Archie Rice.  Benedict Campbell is especially good in the musical hall scenes with Reza Jacobs as his faithful pianist and less-than-comfortable sidekick that alternate with the domestic scenes.  His jokes are ancient and his music is outdated.  He seems to know it but resents the audience for not responding the way they used to.  As the play progresses Campbell shows how Archie’s revulsion completely undermines his routines so that they are so longer even superficially funny.  His signature song “Why Should I Care?” changes in meaning from a happy-go-lucky tune to song riddled with cynicism.  In his programme note Billington suggests that Osborne sees something “heroic” about Archie, but in this production that is nowhere evident.  His persistence in his trade despite its decline into interludes in a twice-nightly nude revue looks like foolishness and his inability to change or start a new life in Canada looks like cowardice.  In the domestic scenes Campbell is less successful.  He uses jokes and songs to defuse tension but his sudden changes of mood seem to come out of nowhere and often to appear as bluster.  Nevertheless, his sudden imitation of a black woman singing the blues when he hears news about Mick is a moment of eerie, hair-raising theatricality. 

Corrine Koslo, in one of the richest roles she has had in a long time, rises fully to the challenge of presenting Phoebe in all her pitiful soddenness.  Koslo shows that Phoebe was once a woman full of life and humour, but the dullness of her life with Archie has driven that out of her.  Either he is away performing or philandering or he is at home verbally abusing her for becoming the sad frump and alcoholic she has become.  Koslo’s is a heart-rending performance of a woman who has lost all her dreams and who struggles to maintain a genteel façade as she numbs her pain with alcohol.

David Schurmann gives an excellent performance as Billy Rice.  Initially, we may laugh at his obvious racism and jingoism as the product of an ageing mind.  But when we see how Archie’s music hall performances are informed by the same views, we see where Archie learnt his repellent ideas.  Schurmann maintains our ambiguous response to Billy throughout the play--a seemingly kindly old gentleman on the one hand, an arch-conservative bigot on the other.

As Jean, Krista Colosimo seems to turn herself on and off.  When she is “on”, she is very good as she recognizes all over again the numerous reasons why she left home in her family’s interactions.  In the long passages, however, where Jean looks on but has nothing to say, Colosimo seems to turn “off” and it is impossible to judge what her character is thinking.  In contrast, Ken James Stewart, with less stage time that Colosimo, is always “on”, his face reflecting immediately the changing moods he feels even when he is silent.  His performance of the bluesy “Singing for You” about his brother Mick, is remarkable in its fierceness as it cuts through the  Rices’ treacly hypocrisy.  Graeme Somerville and Ric Reid make brief appearances as Jean’s boyfriend Graham and Archie’s successful brother Bill.  Both turn up only to have their offers--security for Jean, change for Archie--rejected. 

Given a family with such explosive dynamics that looks back at theatrical Tyrone clan of Eugene O’Neill’s “Long Day’s Journey into Night” and forward to the drunken game-playing vigil of George and Martha in Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”, it is surprising that we feel so little tension.  In large part this is due to the leisurely pace set by director Jackie Maxwell that never seems to pick up speed over its three hours and 15 minutes.  Maxwell uses Esther Maloney as the Club Girl to hold up signs signalling the show’s 13 scenes.  This is a Brechtian device appropriate to the play’s structure, but it does mean we don’t snap in and out of the music hall scenes as quickly as we should.  Also, given that Hartwell has provided Maxwell with two stages on the stage, it is odd that only in the last act Maxwell begins to locate some of the Rice family’s set speeches on these stages rather than in their parlour.  Greater use of the two stages in this way would blur the division between the music hall and the parlour and underline Osborne’s point that this family of performers is always performing, whether at home or not, to the extent that they are no longer in contact with reality.

While the production may not be ideal, we still must applaud the Shaw for reviving “The Entertainer” and revealing what a fascinating work it is.  Osborne may have rejected all things Shavian, but his once-inflammatory play now looks very much like a continuation of the tradition of Harley Granville Barker.  I have always thought that the Shaw Festival mandate should include Shaw, his contemporaries--even those who died in 1856 and those born in 1950--along with plays set in that period.  Alexandre Dumas, père (1802-70) is thus one of Shaw’s contemporaries as are Tom Stoppard (born 1939) and Michael Frayn (born 1933).  The range of those who were alive when Shaw was is quite amazing and embodies the massive changes that occurred during that period.  I am glad the Festival is beginning to explore these paths.  I am also very pleased with the Studio Theatre, a much more comfortable and intimate space that the pit-like Studio Theatre at Stratford.  “The Entertainer” may be a demanding evening but it and its venue hold out the promise exciting things to come.     

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.

Photo: Benedict Campbell. ©Emily Cooper.