Boy, this Dresser is ever so smart
AGED only 61, Ken Stott surely secures himself ‘grand old man’ status with his performance as ancient actor ‘Sir’ in a fine revival of The Dresser. Once such a raffish figure, Mr Stott has grown reassuringly lumpy. The girth has expanded and today he bears an uncanny resemblance to Labour peer George Foulkes. The voice, always fruity, now sounds as though he has been drinking neat Ronseal. What a sonorous instrument it has become.
Ronald Harwood claims that his 1980 play was not autobiographical, but in the Fifties he was backstage dresser to actormanager Sir Donald Wolfit. He used his experiences to create a satisfyingly deep portrait of life with a travelling theatre company — sympathetic, often comical, yet also with enough bitterness to give it a realistic flavour.
Reece Shearsmith plays Norman, the long-suffering dresser who ‘works miracles’ in getting his old master ready for the evening’s performance. Using flattery and sympathy, Norman removes Sir from a puddle of self-pity and persuades him to play King Lear. The elegance of the play is that Lear’s decline mirrors that of the vulnerable thespian playing him.
Sean Foley’s fine production, with a hand-pushed revolve and handsome set, wrings plenty of laughs from the spectacle of this Lear as it is enacted, under a World War II air- raid, by a hard-pressed troupe.
Sir swears that he ‘ hates the swine’ of the audience, yet he is so outraged by the barbarian Luftwaffe that he defies them to give a vintage performance.
I became so wrapped up by Mr Stott’s acting that I quite forgot I was watching him and felt sure I was seeing Sir in his Learish garb.
For a big man, Mr Stott has touches of the greatest delicacy: a millisecond’s hesitation when talking to his wife (the excellent Harriet Thorpe) to suggest a past indiscretion sticks particularly in the mind.
A decent supporting cast includes Selina Cadell as the lovelorn stage manageress and Simon Rouse as a mouldering actor who takes the part of Shakespeare’s Fool (in motley, he could be the late Robert Runcie). Is Norman this play’s counterpart to the Fool? Poor Norman. Poor, wise Fool.
WHEN Sir absentmindedly starts applying black facepaint, thinking he is about to play Othello, the script has a few lines scoffing about how ridiculous it would be for Lear to be a different colour from his daughters.
Ha! That is exactly what we had in a recent RSC production. Playwright Harwood was decades ahead of his time (but not even he can have imagined Glenda Jackson as a female Lear, coming to the Old Vic before Christmas).
I loved this ‘Dresser’. It catches the tenderness between not only Sir and Norman, but also some of the other members of this theatre ‘family’.
Norman is not an unalloyed saint. Mr Shearsmith gives full vent to his flashes of bitchiness. His is a superlative turn, quite the match of Mr Stott’s.
Most nobly, there is a purpose to these sad characters’ theatrical struggle, for in maintaining the Shakespearean tradition in the face of Hitler’s bombs they honour decency and resilience. Talking of his vocation, the exhausted Sir says: ‘The bondage is everlasting.’