The Entertainer UK Tour

Shane Richie is to play Archie Rice in a brand new production of John Osborne's The Entertainer. The Entertainer UK Tour tickets commences in August 2019 at the Leicester Curve.

Sean O'Connor will direct Shane Richie in an innovative adaptation touring the UK from August to November 2019. For the first time since its premiere in 1957, this classic play will be 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, his daughter Jean returns from campaigning against the war, and Archie’s professional and personal lives collide with devastating consequences.

Curve’s Chief Executive Chris Stafford and Artistic Director Nikolai Foster said: “Osborne’s masterpiece was first presented in 1957 and alongside Archie Rice’s failing career, invited the audience to consider its own culture and what it meant to be English at a time of huge shifts within British society. Times have clearly changed, but as our country faces one of the most tumultuous periods since the end of the Second World War, the play once again captures the zeitgeist and is tantalisingly ripe for revival. “It’s a thrilling play - epic and filled with humanity - and provides Shane Richie with a role he was born to play; we know it will be an hilarious and heartbreaking performance. We are also thrilled to welcome director Sean O’Connor to Curve, whose compelling vision for the play will reveal it afresh to an entirely new generation.” Shane Richie said, “Following in the black patent shoes of Olivier, Gambon, Lindsay & Branagh, it’s an incredible honour to be asked to play one of literatures greatest fictional characters, Archie Rice. In the words of the great man himself “you’re a long time dead, let’s just whoop it up!“

Further casting is to be announced.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odUX8mJ7_J8

THE ENTERTAINER UK TOUR

27 - 31 August 2019

Curve Theatre, Leicester

2 - 7 September 2019

Milton Keynes Theatre

9 - 14 September 2019

Malvern Festival Theatre

16 - 21 September 2019

Plymouth Theatre Roya

23 - 28 September 2019

New Victoria Theatre Woking

30 September - 5 October 2019

Eastbourne Theatres

7 - 12 October 2019

Wolverhampton Grand Theatre

15 - 19 October 2019

Coventry Theatre Belgrade

21 - 26 October 2019

Theatre Royal Brighton

28 October - 3 November 2019

Manchester Opera House

4 - 9 November 2019

Churchill Theatre Bromley

11 - 16 November 2019

Cheltenham Everyman Theatre

18 - 23 November 2019

Shrewsbury Severn Theatre

25 - 30 November 2019

Richmond Theatre