THE ENTERTAINER. To 5 April.
Glasgow
THE ENTERTAINER
by John Osborne
Citizens' Theatre To 5 April 2003
Tue-Sat 7.30pm Mat 29 March 3pm
Runs 2hr 15min One interval
TICKETS: 0141 429 0022
Review: Timothy Ramsden
A Citizens'-style exercise which brings clarity and cliche.Of all the things: who'd have thought the last Citizens' home-produced main-stage show of the 30+ year Havergal, Prowse, MacDonald regime which has so influenced the theatre world - its ways of directing, designing and translating, and the idea of repertoire - would be a near half-century old English play in a tacky Citz-tribute style? If only John Osborne were here to see it, we'd be assured of a ding-dong confrontation to beat anything Caroline Paterson's revival offers on stage.
Before the play starts (Osborne's opener, showing dying music-hall's dead-behind-the-eyes comedian Archie Rice is cut for a brief scene where a drunk gatecrashes some no-hope singer's microphone, a sign of the new age in entertainment) fears prick up.
Two bedraggled-haired women sit heads down at tables on the stage periphery. They're often there. At times they leave mid-scene, for no apparent reason; at other times they accompany Archie's long-past sell-by-date act. They quickly signal boredom and disgust and go on doing so throughout. What else is there? They're not in the play: Osborne made much the same point in a few seconds with a prurient nude Britannia tableau.
Sean Scanlan has Archie's measure and if he'd been encouraged to widen his vocal and physical range he could have taken us deeper into the character. Though Osborne's use of him as a sign of England's decline is possibly muddied by the Scottish setting, there's room for a bigger flare-up between his resignation and daughter Jean's political activism.
Yet Kate Dickie's Jean seems covered by the same pall of tedium as her dad; it begins to seem more a lazy production ennui than a sharp-focused look at what Osborne's script was probing (needless to say, this goes with a factitious 'relevance' tying the play's Suez link into modern conflict, with 'Iraq' prominent on a projection placard).
There's more of a boil-up between Jean and her grandad; Finlay Welsh's old trouper has a dignity and sharpness that marks him out as the most successful portrait on stage - though Anne Myatt as Archie's second, disregarded wife Phoebe, is beautifully-acted, needing only directorial shaping to strengthen the sense of need and fear underlaying laughter.
Kenny Miller's set tricks out the stage and auditorium with cheap coloured streamers, suggesting both patriotic tat and seedy entertainment holes, but the longer scenes in Archie's home are set on a raised, distant stage. In Stuart Jenkins' dank lighting they have a gloom that adds - perhaps excessively - to the downbeat mood.
Ricky Ross's score is as adequate as John Addison's original, though the loss of the slow blues for Mick's funeral (killed as a Middle-East hostage) loses the tie with the soul-experience of Archie's deadbeat life - a black woman singing (needless to say, we have a pre-recorded blues under Archie's recollection, diminishing the impact).
Paterson has done an impeccable tick-list of Citz-style. But that style - not always successful with its originators - descends to cliche. As so often, it clarifies at the cost of simplifying: polishing up while dumbing down.
This Entertainer will do. But how much better to have gone out with one of Giles Havergal's own penetrating, fresh, surprising productions. Let's hope the new Citizens' management will be inviting their soon-to-be-former artistic head - for my money, one of the world's great directors - back soon as a guest.
Archie Rice: Sean Scanlan
Billy Rice: Finlay Welsh
Jean Rice: Kate Dickie
Phoebe Rice: Anne Myatt
Frank Rice: Paul Thomas Hickey
Graham: Stuart Davids
Charlie: Bob Dog-Boy Rafferty
with Lisa Eaglesham, Lynne Maclachlan
Director: Caroline Paterson
Designer: Kenny Miller
Lighting: Stuarty Jenkins
Music: Ricky Ross
Costume: Louise Borland
2003-03-16 13:07:11