{"id":11553,"date":"2008-10-19T21:00:03","date_gmt":"2008-10-20T01:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/vardibidian\/2008\/10\/19\/11553.html"},"modified":"2018-03-13T18:49:21","modified_gmt":"2018-03-13T23:49:21","slug":"book-report-the-entertainer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2008\/10\/19\/book-report-the-entertainer\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Report: The Entertainer"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I mentioned Archie Rice back a bit ago because it’s one of the parts that is notorious for requiring a tremendous amount of memorization. For Grs who aren’t familiar with The Entertainer<\/a>, it’s the fifties, Archie Rice is trying to make a living at the tail end of the music hall business, and we alternate between his ratty little family and his ratty little stage act.\n

It’s also famous for the following story: Laurence Olivier had seen John Osborne’s first major play, Look Back in Anger<\/i>, and hated it. When Arthur Miller came to London and wanted to see it, Mr. Olivier tried to dissuade him but failed, and then showed up to watch it again alongside the great American playwright. Mr. Miller loved it, not surprisingly; Mr. Olivier took him back to meet Mr. Osborne and turned on the famous charm, asking the young fellow if he could write a part for him. It’s not that the great classical actor changed his mind about the play (in my version of the story), it’s that he recognized that if that crap was the sort of thing people were going to like, then he should get into some of it, because otherwise you wind up like…\n

…well, like Archie Rice. Or, since that’s what’s going on as well, like England.\n

That said, it’s a terrific part, but I don’t think it’s a very entertaining play. Or, rather, it’s the sort of play I don’t find very entertaining. Ratty little people just like ratty little people I don’t want to spend time with, behaving in just the way that makes me not want to spend time with them. In The Entertainer<\/i>, that’s broken up with bits of the sort of show that nobody in his right mind would ever want to see.\n

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus<\/I>,
-Vardibidian.\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Which YHB wouldn’t turn it down, you know, seriously.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[194],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-report"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11553"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11553\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18547,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11553\/revisions\/18547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}