UK Tour of John Osborne’s The Entertainer

Co-produced by Anthology Theatre with Simon Friend Entertainment and Leicester Curve Theatre, The Entertainer will open at Curve on 27th August 2019 and then tour the UK until November.  Directed by Sean O’Connor, the classic play will be innovatively adapted and given a vibrant new setting.

1982: Archie Rice is a washed-up entertainer playing a summer season. As his soldier son sails with the Task Force to liberate the Falklands, and his daughter Jean returns from campaigning against the war, Archie’s professional and personal lives to collide with devastating consequences.

Labelled “Brilliant…one of the best plays in our repertory” by Kenneth Tynan (The Times), and chosen as one of the greatest plays of the 20th Century by Michael Billington (Chief Theatre Critic of The Guardian), John Osborne’s classic embarks on its first ever major UK Tour, starring Shane Richie in a role he was born to play: Archie Rice.

Archie Rice was created by one of the UK’s greatest classical actors, Laurence Olivier. His casting in the first production of the play is legendary. Since then, many classical actors have played the role very much in Olivier’s overpowering shadow; Corin Redgrave, Robert Lindsey and most recently Kenneth Branagh. Shane Richie has balanced a hugely successful forty year career between theatre, film & TV; and he has been a regular fixture on prime time television. Now he will follow in these esteemed footsteps.