Benedict Campbell (standing), Corrine Koslo and Ken James Stewart in the Shaw Festival production of The Entertainer.

NIAGARA-ON-THE-LAKE -- When it comes to the Middle East, the muddle in the middle just seems to keep expanding: Fifty years ago, it was the Suez Crisis, today, it's the war in Iraq, and the election in Iran, bracketed by the whole Arab-Israeli conflict on one side and an Afghan war that daily threatens to spill over into Pakistan on the other.

In fact, in the 52 years since it was written, the political superstructure on which John Osborne built The Entertainer would seem to have grown increasingly relevant.

In fact, in the Shaw Festival's revival of the work, which inaugurated their new Studio Theatre with a Saturday night opening, the politics of the piece seem tragically too familiar, marked as they are by political leaders flying in the face of international morality and the inexplicable execution of political hostages.

But, in fact, in this follow-up to his tremendously successful Look Back In Anger, the prototypical Angry Young Man used the political situation of the day only as a launchpad to lob grenades at what he saw as the faltering heart of British influence, using the already dying art of burlesque and the changing nature of the family as metaphors for a country in crisis.

The two elements come together in the heart of the family Rice. Patriarch Billy Rice (David Schurmann) is a retired showman of the Edwardian School, and he currently makes his home with his son Archie (Benedict Campbell) and Archie's second wife Phoebe (Corrine Koslo).

Like his father, Archie is a showman too, eking out a living in a run-down music hall in an un-named resort town on the English coast, turning the dross of his life into fool's gold with the help of massive infusions of gin.

The action begins when Jean (Krista Colosimo), Archie's daughter from his first marriage, returns to the family fold to lick her wounds after ending her engagement and loses no time whatsoever in diving into the pool of gin that represents the Rice family tradition.

But with one son in the army and another (Ken James Stewart) recovering from a stint in jail for being a conscientious objector, external forces are at work that will shake the family out of their gin-soaked stupor.

On a runway set created by Peter Hartwell, featuring a music hall stage at either end and the Rice family living room in its centre, director Jackie Maxwell brings Osborne's blowsy script to a sort of stately life, despite the fact that things get off to a rather shaky start in an extended scene between Schurmann and Colosimo, the former seemingly somewhat at sea but nonetheless gamely trying to create a relationship by bouncing a fine performance off Colosimo's awkwardness.

With the arrival of Koslo, Schurmann settles into what proves to be a memorable performance, with Koslo matching him at every stride, turning the long-suffering Phoebe into an open wound that is clearly infected.

And while Colosimo the performer seems to sit outside the production in a way that Osborne never intended, Stewart finds a bit of mettle to make a third generation of Rices memorable.

Written for no less a talent than Laurence Olivier, who first played the role, this is of course primarily a star vehicle for the actor playing Archie and in a role once essayed by his august father Douglas, Campbell doesn't disappoint, for all that one senses that he never arrives at a point of living the role instead of just performing it. Happily, this proves problematic only in the end of a riveting second act, where faced with the demand for a cry wrenched from his heart, Campbell must content himself with a mere facsimile.
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