The Entertainer Playhouse, Liverpool
Journey's End Comedy, London WC2
Round the Horne Venue, London WC2
When Archie Rice, has-been comedian, takes to the stage it is impossible not to laugh - although it would be as correct to cry. It is the most abject moments in John Osborne's The Entertainer that are most entertaining. And it is a play in which funny and sad almost come to mean the same thing. Corin Redgrave understands this perfectly. His performance as a comedian - stale as yesterday's seaside postcard - is brilliant. He stands under the spotlight, behind a mike, buttoned into a schoolboy blazer. He moves his limbs modestly, as if they were designed to fold away, like parts of a penknife. His professional gaiety disarms, his smile is an endangered creature. Archie, in Redgrave's wonderful account, may have no talent - but he has charm.
As Archie's wife, Phoebe, Paola Dionisotti gives an arresting, odd-ball performance. She is like a Modigliani portrait - all sadness and elbows - and seems lost in her own life (she, too, doesn't know whether to laugh or cry). Dionisotti's voice has remarkable range: scaling heights, plummeting depths, growling where necessary and at its most distinctly crystalline when her character is most drunk. Every night, Phoebe pours out more gin only to discover that her sorrows can swim.
The Entertainer is often said to be driven by anger. But in John Tiffany's sensitive production it is the absence of anger - most of all in Archie - that moves and alarms. Somewhere in this marvellous play, Archie remarks: 'Observation is the basis of all art.' It is not so much John Osborne's observation as his ear that thrills - his perfect pitch - he can trace precisely how alcohol warps conversation or how complaint covers for disappointment.
The challenge that Tiffany faces is to relate the family to one another thoroughly enough that they appear more than a group of abnormal strangers. There is still room for manoeuvre. Leslie Randall is almost too convincing as Archie's old bore of a father - on a non-stop complainathon. Eileen Walsh's Jean - Archie's daughter - is, at present, too static. Mark Rice-Oxley, as the grow-up son, is more plausible, with a splendid singing voice.
But these are tiny reservations. The Entertainer - with a liberating set by Ti Green designed to look as if the Rices lived inside a deserted theatre - is exactly what is needed to boost Liverpool Playhouse's fortunes under its new artistic team, Gemma Bodinetz and Deborah Aydon.
When Wilfred Owen wrote about the First World War, his poetry was wrung out of 'the pity' of his subject. R.C. Sherriff's Journey's End uses a light touch to do the same thing long before the heavy artillery arrives. It is amazing how Journey's End (first performed 75 years ago) is of its time and ours. And David Grindley's first-class production has an urgency to it, as if to plead that what happened yesterday should not happen tomorrow. And at the end his cast deliver a silent message; they stand lined up like effigies against a war memorial, an unending white register of names.
But it is the 'topping' performances - to use the soldiers' preferred superlative - that make this such a powerful evening. David Haig as Lieutenant Osborne is wonderful. He manages to make life in the awful dugout (well designed by Jonathan Fensom) seem almost homely and befriends everyone in it. His kindness is a form of heroism. Geoffrey Streatfeild's Captain Stanhope is compelling: a man of honour, pushed past his own limits and onwards, whey-faced, partly destroyed and - like other brave men in the war - tormented by believing himself a coward. Paul Bradley's heartily likable Second Lieutenant Trotter provides an agreeable contrast of tone: he is a cockney, a relentless eater and talker. Phil Cornwell as the Second Lieutenant, another cockney, in charge of provisions, also provides unfailing comedy with each new destitute dish he serves. And Lieutenant Raleigh (Christian Coulson) is heartrendingly convincing as the boy killed before fear had time to take hold.
Everything that is not to do with the war stands out like a miracle - a photograph of hollyhocks or of someone's girl, a bird heard above the trenches or the rising sun. There is no time in which to mourn individual deaths (and eight weeks in which to catch up with this superb production).
Walking into Round the Horne was like slipping into a club I did not know existed. The Venue, a basement theatre off Leicester Square, was packed with an audience that laughed so hard you felt they couldn't be for real. Brian Cooke, sole survivor of the original crew, has adapted the Sixties hit radio show with a garnish of new material. For fans, Michael Kingsbury's production is a treat. Even as a non-fan, I found the sense of being in a Sixties radio studio (designer Liz Cooke) uncanny (the props must have been lifted from an attic at Broadcasting House). As Kenneth Horne, Jonathan Rigby catches perfectly that BBC tone that takes everything in its stride, becoming ever more reasonable as lewd innuendo gets out of control. Kate Brown is feisty as Betty Marsden and Robin Sebastian does a fine job impersonating Kenneth Williams: slick, nasal and coquettish.
I only missed Williams's hallmark, his long drawn-out delivery of words, his savouring of syllables that had the effect of quadrupling - or more - every double entendre.
· Susannah Clapp is away
Three to see
After Miss Julie
Donmar, London WC2
Helen Baxendale, Richard Coyle, Kelly Reilly: all terrific.
Hurricane
Soho, London W1
Richard Dormer's whirlwind show about Alex Higgins.
Anything Goes
Drury Lane, London WC2
Trevor Nunn's gorgeous production.
