“For God’s sake, you’re a third-rate actor-manager on a tatty tour of the provinces, not some Colossus bestriding the narrow world.” A withering refrain from Her Ladyship (Harriet Thorpe) to her ageing partner and narcissistic star of a tired repertory company bringing Shakespeare’s tragedies to “the swines” of the masses during World War 2 who goes by the salutation Sir (Ken Stott). Which begs the questions: when is it time to put away the toys and stop playing dressing up? And who decides when that happens? The answers to which send Sir (who’s not a Sir) into a fit of anxiety and depression as he agonises over whether “to go on and on and on”, “always with the terror increasing”, or exit stage left and retire.

By his side or rather in his shadow, for almost two decades, stands his camp dresser Norman (played by The League of Gentlemen’s Reece Shearsmith) who night after night has to lift his beloved Sir from the depths of despair and bolster his waning confidence with tales of “I had a friend… ” so that both he and his ragtag ensemble of “old men, cripples and nancy boys” can ensure that the show must go on. But what does he get in return? A thank you, a handshake, a drink in the bar? Nada! Not even a footnote in his memoirs which praises carpenters, electricians and property men, but airbrushes the dresser out of sight out of mind.

And “out of mind” is the state they both find themselves in at the end of the play when the curtain comes down on their ramshackle production of King Lear, their wayward careers and their broken dreams. Sir’s time has passed. And without Sir, Norman’s life – like that of the stiff-upper-lipped stage manager Madge (Selina Cadell) whose walk is delightfully described as though marching to Onward, Christian Soldiers – has no meaning. “What’s going to happen to me?” he cries, as the bombs drop and the sirens squeal and he reaches for another drink from his glass half-empty.

Ken Stott is terrific, charging about the stage in the same unruly manner as Timothy Spall in Mike Leigh’s excellent biographical drama Mr Turner – like a wild boar. Yet his muscular delivery of plosive consonants discharged in his trademark Scottish brogue is beautifully counterbalanced by his ‘sotto voce soliloquies’ as he dredges his soul in search of an answer to the meaning of life. “There was a time when I had to paint in all the lines, now I only deepen what is already there.” And his advice to Irene (Phoebe Sparrow), an ambitious young actress comically referred to as “the mattress of the company”, is as I know from experience savage yet frighteningly accurate: “You must be prepared to sacrifice what most people call life.”

But Ronald Harwood‘s award-winning play, originally staged in 1980, which has spawned a number of successful television and film adaptations most recently with Anthony Hopkins and Ian McKellen in the leading roles, is called The Dresser, not Sir. And Reece Shearsmith’s performance is equally impressive (think Larry Grayson on speed) with each upward inflection, each limp-wristed gesture and each rolling of the eyes meticulously choreographed and executed. Perhaps too meticulously. A charge I would level at the play’s speedy opening and mannered exchanges in which tragedy and realism often play second fiddle to comedy and effect.

This is the first stage production of The Dresser I have seen and, as much as I enjoyed it, I cannot help but wonder: outwith theatre circles, how is this thirty-six-year old play set during the Second World War relevant to a modern audience? The script is wonderful, but the references are for the “in crowd”. And though the threat of war hovers in the air, it says little about the trials and tribulations of life today. But where it does resonate, and why I would recommend this fine production before it leaves the West End for a brief run at the Chichester Festival Theatre, is in the relationship between Master and Servant, Sir and The Dresser, played brilliantly by Stott and Shearsmith. “I hate cinema,” opines Sir. “I believe in living things.” And where better to examine the fate of living things than on the living and breathing platform of “all the world’s a stage”.

Video courtesy of: West End Theatre

Peter Callaghan
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