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.
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
