Scene 1
The scene opens with a glimpse of a somewhat tasteless variety show and a suggestion of domestic violence offstage, setting the location as a fairly low-class boarding house of some kind. An old man, Billy Rice, is trying to break up an argument between an offstage couple in a different apartment. Billy has a strong voice and comes across as a more upper-class gentleman. He complains briefly about the other tenants in the building, supposedly Polish and Irish immigrants.
Jean Rice, initially described as “Girl”, arrives and is welcomed in by her grandfather Billy, who indicates that some landlady has let out Mick’s old room to another person. This too helps to set the scene: the family does not own the building and is renting a group of rooms in a house, but does not rent the entire house. So despite Billy’s higher-class mannerisms the group is not wealthy. A woman named Phoebe is at the movies, and although her exact relationship to Jean and Billy is not spelled out, it’s evident that Phoebe is older than Jean but younger than Billy.
While discussing where to go and what to do, Billy’s remarks suggest that he is an aging singer or performer of some kind: possibly the “entertainer” describrd in the title. But Jean asks after “Dad”, who is at the theatre in some kind of organizational capacity, putting together a road show. But vaudeville is dead at this point and Billy indicates that he advised Jean’s father to get out of the stage show business, and that he wouldn’t listen. There’s also some kind of trouble in the Middle East (specifically the Suez Canal crisis, which is explained later), and some homegrown demonstrations against the British government in which Jean has participated.
Billy wants to pay Jean’s train fare, and talks about having a small amount of money “set aside in the Post Office”, possibly in cash, however Jean feels guilty about borrowing money from him even though it’s just “half a quid” or fifty pence, which in the 1950s would have had about the same buying power as ten US dollars in 2017.
Billy establishes himself as somewhat old-fashioned. He dislikes television in pubs, women who show too much skin, and women who drink too much in public. Jean has had four gin drinks on the train. However he pities the young people, because he’s known good things in his life even though his best years are behind him.
Scene 2
The scene opens with Archie Rice’s comedy sketch and song from his variety show. He interacts with an off-stage witty person from the audience. But his song extols apathy: “Why should I bother to care?” This, apparently, is Jean’s father at his theater.
Scene 3
Phoebe, who was mentioned in Scene 1, has made an appearance. She’s about sixty, with poor makeup and common mannerisms, but she dotes on Jean and starts sampling the gin Jean brought as a gift. She drinks heavily, but Billy abstains. Jean indicates that she and Graham (her boyfriend) have had an argument. Phoebe acknowledges that although Jean is “not her own” she still cares about her because she’s Archie’s daughter. This finally establishes the four characters’ relationships to each other, and it places Archie squarely in the middle as Billy’s son, Jean’s father, and Phoebe’s love interest.
Jean’s description of the argument between herself and Graham shows a significant class difference between them. Whereas Jean is an educator of young people from a Youth Club for disadvantaged children, Graham is an aspiring lawyer who disapproves of Jean’s nascent interest in politics and her presence at an anti-government rally at Trafalgar Square. Jean hates her job and finds it difficult, but she believes she’s getting somewhere with the teenagers. Graham wants to marry her, but Jean wants to try different things first. She doesn’t know exactly who she is or what she wants out of life, but she feels stifled and controlled by Graham.
Mick, who was mentioned in the first scene, is described more fully. He’s one of Phoebe’s sons, who is serving overseas in the military. Frank, her other son, refused to serve and was imprisoned six months for it. Now Frank plays the piano and is a porter and boiler-stoker in a hospital. This earns him some income. Billy mentiones the Dardanelles, in World War I, which he survived without a scratch.
Scene 4
Archie is performing again and some of his jokes are falling flat. Yet he blusters a bit, presenting himself as a bit of a rake and a ladies’ man, and closes with a song again that is somewhat patriotic but mostly about looking out for number one.
Scene 5
Archie finally arrives, somewhat drunk, and is welcomed by Billy, Jean, and Phoebe. In one of his many throwaway comments which convey a great deal of plot exposition, he mentions that he is behind on his income taxes. There is a brief discussion about male ballet dancers that is mildly homophobic. Both Billy and Archie make derogatory remarks about foreigners and homosexual men.
The variety show is losing what little popularity it had, but Archie puts on a show of bravado and tries to get the other characters to drink in honor of having avoided the tax man for twenty years. He deliberately insults and baits his elderly father. A telegram has arrived for him, but he ignores it. Phoebe is tired of hard work and poverty, but Jean detects that something is wrong. After the others have gone to bed, Jean coaxes Archie into telling her the truth: Archie and Phoebe’s son Mick has been captured in the Suez.
Scene 6
Some time has passed. Billy, Phoebe, and Jean are talking about the fact that Mick is famous and the papers say he will soon be returned home. Billy reminisces about the past when he was a guest of an Ambassador, who gave him a case of expensive cigars. Phoebe has a premonition that the British government’s attempt to get Mick back will fail, but Billy is confident that Britain’s power and influence will save Mick, whose captors dare not harm him.
Phoebe indicates that Archie’s show is a failure and that he’s never been able to get the top talent to work with him. She is drunk and garrulous, and stressed over Mick. She tells Jean not to presume too much, given that Jean isn’t her daughter whereas Mick and Frank are both her boys. She complains about Brother Bill, Billy’s older son and Archie’s older brother, who was given the same excellent education as Archie, who became a successful lawyer, and who helped the family from a distance but who never understood them. Archie and the children hate him for it, but Phoebe likes and admires Brother Bill.
Archie enters with Frank, his second son. He starts baiting the drunk and defenseless Phoebe, who is emotionally upset over many long-ago events including the fact that it was the despised Brother Bill who paid most of Jean’s college expenses. Billy mistakenly helps himself to a slice of a cake Phoebe bought in anticipation of Mick’s safe return. Phoebe verbally attacks Billy, who leaves sadly. It is revealed that the family is living chiefly off of Billy's savings and his pension, along with occasional gifts from Brother Bill.
Scene 7
Archie is onstage again, dead behind the eyes and trying to pretend to be witty and clever. His comedic patter is falling flat and is mostly incoherent. Compared to his witty and natural act in the second scene, he appears to have lost nearly all of his polish and his professional craft.
The audience (what there is of it) is bored. Archie sings a song about being grateful to be “normal”. There are bursts of attempted patriotism in extremely poor taste but nobody responds.
Scene 8
After the night’s performance, Archie, Frank, Phoebe, Billy, and Jean are at home trying to distract themselves. Frank delivers a pithy soliloquy about being a “nobody” and not having a chance to do anything meaningful or important. He tells Jean to start thinking about “number one” and what’s good for herself, because nobody else will.
Archie relates a story about when he went to Canada during the war and saw the most moving performance of his life, when an old woman of African descent sang a spiritual in a bar with so much emotion and feeling that Archie realized that nothing he’d ever accomplish as a showman would be nearly as good or as authentic. He wishes that he and that old woman could trade places so he could experience that amount of emotion, because deep down he’s given up and simply doesn’t care anymore.
Later, when Jean explains that Phoebe suddenly turned on her, Archie explains that Phoebe caught him in bed with Jean’s mother, and that Jean’s mother left him and died not long afterwards. A policeman arrives with bad news. Mick has been killed by his captors. Archie finally experiences a loss powerful enough to overcome his inner feelings of deadness and sings a spiritual with as much feeling as the old woman back in Canada. There is no audience.
Scene 9
Instead of Archie on the stage alone performing for an audience, it’s his son Frank. Frank is playing at a piano, and singing alone. He’s asking someone to bring his brother’s body back on an airplane, but not to talk to him.
Scene 10
After Mick’s funeral, the family is at home. Jean wants a serious conversation, but Archie is nattering on about his adventures in Donegal and draught Bass. She becomes frustrated with the way her family is grieving, and they are angry at her for not understanding. She begins to see the schism between them, and how she is becoming more like Graham and Brother Bill in terms of her values and her world-view.
Jean wonders what it’s all for, and why her brother had to die in some bizarre overseas incident that had nothing to do with the family. She’s angry and she wants to object. She’s also found out that Archie plans to divorce Phoebe in order to take up with a young twenty-year-old woman whose parents are supposed to be funding Archie’s stage production.
Billy is coming out of retirement for one more stage production to save Archie. While Jean was trying to manipulate her father into breaking up with the young woman, Billy went to see her parents and told them Archie was married, thereby ending the affair and also Archie’s last chance of having a financial backer for his show. Billy therefore feels a need to perform again so as to save his son.
Scene 11
Archie is giving a farewell announcement for his father Billy, who has died of a heart attack. A woman representing the one whose performance he adminred in Canada enters, symbolically dons Billy’s hat and gloves, and dances away with them. She, and not Archie, will carry on Billy’s entertainment work.
Scene 12
Two conversations are going on: one between Jean and Graham and the other between Archie and Brother Bill. Bill is offering Archie a last chance to start anew in Canada working for a relative of Phoebe’s. Phoebe and Frank will be going. Jean is breaking up with Graham permanently because she feels more emotionally attached to her odd, eccentric family than to Graham’s way of being. She needs more than that, so she plans to stay with Phoebe until Phoebe and Frank leave for Canada, with or without Archie. Nothing in the text suggests that Jean has been invited to join them: she is, after all, not Phoebe's daughter.
Scene 13
Archie’s final performance. In a roundabout way, he talks about the need to be sincere, to feel emotions, and to be authentic. He tries to sing his “Why Should I Care” song, but it peters out. He leaves with Phoebe and the spotlight winks out. Only the music remains.
