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temporary life. This dispirited, three-generation assembly, each one ob–
solescent in his own way, lives in the post-war decline of England and
the sheer force of the characters' disgust and despair makes its unbear–
able and yet indisputable point. In our theater we are so much accus–
tomed to interior history and the private view that the attempt by John
Osborne to relate his sordid theatrical scene to the desperate historical
present fills the audience with unease and even a kind of suspicion. In
psychodrama, Suez and the Welfare State would be considered irrelevant
to the "treatment" of the patient. In Osborne's play the thing is exactly
the contrary. The disgust would not be altered one bit if the characters
were homosexual, incestuous, frigid or whatever. Their peculiar and ter–
rifying obsolescence is not a "revelation" but a fact of history. Their de–
cline is harsh and yet natural, clearly real and not likely to reverse itself.
For these reasons
The Entertainer
is one of the most interesting plays
since Shaw; for the same reasons it is ugly, and it offends, seriously.
Woolcott Gibbs in
T he New Yorker:
"extremely distressing but at the
same time almost totally meaningless tragedy" and "sheer mindless vul–
garity." Brooks Atkinson found this odd, fascinating play "a hollow
allegory."
"Here we are, we're alone in the universe, there's no God, it just seems
that it all began by something as simple as sunlight striking on a piece
of rock. And here we are. We've only got ourselves."
This is Jean, Archie's daughter by his first wife: existential over–
tones, politically "angry," on the side of the proles against the middle
class, demonstrated against Eden during the Suez Crisis, disgusted with
"gloved hand in a gold coach." Jean has a good bit to say, but she is
rather dull, much too earnest and thoughtful. (These serious young
women wander about plays of every sort, scattering boredom like dan–
druff
on the stage, excused only by the fact that the role may be giving
some young female theatrical experience. Indeed the only really inter–
esting girl in the plays of recent years is Maggie in
Cat on a Hot Tin
Roof·)
And Frank, Archie's son, who went to jail as a conscientious
objector:
"Look around you.... You'd better start thinking about number one,
Jeannie, because nobody else is going to do it for you. Nobody else is
going to do it for you because nobody believes in that stuff any more.
Oh, they may say they do, and may take a few bob out of your pay
packet every week and stick stamps on your card to prove it, but don't
believe it-nobody will give you a second look."
