Here's a half-centenary revival of the second play by the original angry young man and later country-dwelling reactionary John Osborne, a terrible ranter who blew open a few doors and windows in English theatre. His first thunderbolt, Look Back in Anger, hasn't stood up well to revival - too strident, too OTT, even though it made the greater impact on its first appearance. A year later, in 1957, came The Entertainer. How will that fare? It's a better play, more tightly focused on a quarrelsome but united family, with a thematic metaphor of theatrical illusion and a serendipitous recurrence of war and death in the Middle East (Suez then, Iraq today). Most of all, it has a towering central role for an exceptional actor good enough to play badly, successful enough to play failure.

The Old Vic team, under Sean Holmes's direction, gives it a loving revival. Set and lighting (Anthony Lamble and Peter Mumford) are more sophisticated but the seaside town and shabby digs are unchanged. The scenes are numbered as in an old music-hall programme and there are even, at the sides of the stage, the lighted boards that show the number up'. I suspect most of the audience will wonder what the hell they are, but I took them as a respectful bonus. And when did you last watch a three-acter with two intervals?

Best of all, John Addison's music remains as background and commentary to Archie Rice's dreadful songs, so jaunty and whistleable, until you take in the desperately nihilistic words: "Why should I care?"; "I'm all out for dear old number one"; and, after the humiliation of Suez, the death of his son and against a tatty tableau of Britannia: "This was their finest shower."

Some things date, inevitably; money particularly. Grandpa's offer of ten bob (50p) to tide his granddaughter over a debt seems as remote as Bottom's "sixpence a day", and Phoebe's rage at the ruin of her special cake bought for the returning warrior which cost 30 shillings' (£1.50, half a labourer's wage), once so poignant, now needs a footnote.

But the three-generations of Rices, held together by gin and failed hope, talking not listening, fending off reality and refusing a change of life, blowsy blonde Phoebe (Pam Ferris), garrulous old Billy (excellent John Normington), and of course Robert Lindsay's Archie, slipping befuddled in and out of home and stage. His front of house scenes are superb with all the props, a nifty hoofer, pacy to start with, then remote and alone till the last empty stage. He's not quite Olivier, but . . . (friends will know what it costs me to write this). Cheer up, though. I saw a carsticker last week: "Wife and Dog missing. Reward for Dog." Archie would like that one. It's not all over.