Reading Order
The Entertainer Reading Order
The Entertainer (1957) by John Osborne is the companion to Look Back in Anger — the play that confirmed Osborne's position as the most important playwright of his generation and Laurence Olivier as the finest actor. Archie Rice is a failing music-hall comedian playing to half-empty houses in a fading seaside variety theater at the time of Suez; his father Billy Rice (the last of the genuine music-hall comedians) is in the wings; his son Frank has just returned from military service; his son Mick is about to go to Suez; his daughter Jean has come home and watches Archie with dismay. Osborne uses the music-hall form deliberately: Archie's routines (the blue comedian's smutty jokes, the straight man's feed lines, the chorus girls, the Union Jack backdrop) are alternated with the domestic scenes, and the contrast between the performance and the reality is the play's formal strategy. Archie himself is one of the great characters in British drama — empty behind the facade, alive only on stage, and aware of both.
Where to start
The Entertainer (1957) — the complete text. Best Osborne reading order: Look Back in Anger → The Entertainer → Inadmissible Evidence → A Patriot for Me.
Complete The Entertainer Book List
- 1Buy
The Entertainer
John Osborne·1957·The complete play — Archie Rice, Billy Rice, Jean, Frank, and Mick. The play that gave Laurence Olivier the role that proved his claim to stage greatness outside Shakespearean tragedy; Olivier and Osborne were friends, and Osborne wrote the play for Olivier specifically - 2Buy
Look Back in Anger
John Osborne·1956·The companion — Jimmy Porter in the Midlands flat. The companion play that established Osborne's reputation; The Entertainer is the companion investigation of the same Britain from a different class perspective: Jimmy is young and educated; Archie is middle-aged and from a world that is disappearing - 3Buy
Inadmissible Evidence
John Osborne·1964·The companion Osborne play about Bill Maitland — a solicitor in middle age who is disintegrating. The companion investigation of what Archie Rice becomes when the performance fails completely; Bill Maitland is the domestic version of Archie Rice's crisis: both are men whose facade is crumbling - 4Buy
The Death of a Salesman
Arthur Miller·1949·Miller's companion about Willy Loman — a travelling salesman whose life has been a performance. The companion investigation of what happens to the performer when the audience stops believing: Willy and Archie are companion figures, both men whose professional identity has been their only identity, and both plays are organized around the moment when that identity collapses - 5Buy
Waiting for Godot
Samuel Beckett·1953·The companion in the tradition of the performance of nothing — Didi and Gogo's vaudeville routines. Archie Rice's comedy routines and Didi and Gogo's vaudeville turns are companion investigations of the relationship between performance and despair: both are organized around figures who perform because there is nothing else - 6Buy
The Magnificent Ambersons
Booth Tarkington·1918·Tarkington's companion about the decline of an aristocratic family in the Midwest as the automobile age arrives. The companion investigation of what happens to the representative of an older world when the newer world makes them obsolete: Billy Rice (the genuine music-hall comedian) and the Amberson family are companion figures of historical supersession - 7Buy
The Birthday Party
Harold Pinter·1958·The companion investigation of the same British seaside world — Stanley at his boarding house. Both The Entertainer and The Birthday Party are set in a similar British world (the faded seaside town, the declining variety theater and the seedy boarding house) and are organized around the same question: what happens to the man who has no future in a Britain that no longer has a use for him? - 8Buy
Scouting for Boys
Robert Baden-Powell·1908·Baden-Powell's companion text for the Empire ethos that The Entertainer is mourning. Not a play but the companion cultural document: Archie Rice's Union Jack backdrop and the failure of Britain at Suez are organized around the same question as Baden-Powell's text — what happens when the values of empire are no longer adequate to the world that has replaced them?
The Entertainer — Frequently Asked Questions
What is The Entertainer about?
The Entertainer is about Archie Rice — a failing music-hall comedian — and the Britain he represents: a country whose confidence in its imperial identity has been destroyed by Suez and whose popular culture (the music hall) is being replaced by television and American entertainment. Osborne uses Archie's variety theater routines (intercut with domestic scenes in the Rice family's house) to investigate the relationship between performance and reality: Archie is alive only on stage, and the play is organized around the question of what happens when the audience stops coming. His son Mick goes to Suez and dies there; his father Billy Rice (the last genuine music-hall comedian, who refused to adapt) dies at the end; and Archie goes on performing for a dwindling audience in a fading theater.
Why is The Entertainer important?
The Entertainer is important for two reasons: it confirmed Osborne as the most significant playwright of his generation, and it gave Laurence Olivier the role that proved his claim to stage greatness outside Shakespeare. Olivier had seen Look Back in Anger and asked Osborne to write a role for him; Osborne wrote Archie Rice for Olivier, and the performance became one of the defining theatrical events of the 1950s. The play is also important as the first major British play to use popular entertainment form (the variety theater, the comedian's patter) as a dramatic structure: Archie's routines are the play's form, not just its content, and the contrast between the performance and the domestic reality behind it is one of Osborne's most sophisticated theatrical strategies.
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