The Entertainer (by John Osborne) must be regarded primarily as Sir Laurence Olivier's evening. But. whatever its weaknesses, the play is still by England's most interesting new playwright in years. This time the author of Look Back in Anger has no brilliantly disgruntled intellectual for a hero, but a flabbily disintegrating vaudevillian. On the music hall stage Archie Rice is a cheap-Jack with rancid jokes and forced jauntiness, whose very vulgarity lacks drive. In theatrical digs he is a shoddy, cynical family man, exploiting those who love him and embossing betrayal with abuse....
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