The Entertainer treads the boards at Theatre Severn
If it was a football match it would be described as a game of two halves.
The first act of The Entertainer at The Theatre Severn had me wincing, the second had me in tears.
Shane Ritchie, aka Alfie Moon, brought John Osbourne's play from the 50s into the 1980s, replacing the Suez Crisis with the Falklands War.
He was the perfect Archie Rice, a has been entertainer whose 1970s mother-in-law and worse jokes had the audience unsure whether to laugh or not. Think of many of those 70s comedians and you get the picture.
When he goes home after treading the boards his coarse, misogynistic, alcoholic ways are even more noticeable alongside the rest of his family, his long suffering wife, brilliantly played by Sara Crowe, his proud but fragile father, his son and his daughter who comes home for the weekend having been involved in a peace demonstration in Trafalgar Square.
His other son is serving his country as a soldier in the Falklands War and news comes through that he has been captured by the Argentines.
Osbourne deftly changes the mood of the family and of Archie in particular amid the jingoism of the time.
With the majority of those in the audience of an age to remember the Falkland War there was clever use of pop songs, Thatcher's speeches and even the dreadful tabloid headlines of the time to take us back to 1982.
Archie's life begins to crumble around him and he desperately tries to hold onto the only life he knows, as an entertainer.
I heard rumblings in the audience in the interval with many not really knowing how to take this updated version of the play. I hope that they were gripped as much as I was, by the second half.
The Entertainer is on at Theatre Severn until November 23.
