The Dresser

This week I've been enjoying BBC 2's adaptation of The Dresser.

Ronald Harwood’s play, The Dresser, is about a touring theatre company set against the backdrop of the Second World War. The troupe are headed by a mildly talented despot, known to the audience as ‘Sir’ (Anthony Hopkins). The group are a makeshift band of amateurs, only earning their place because better men, better actors are away at war. For them, the irony is that in escaping war with one fascist, they have to work with another. 

The play the actors are currently in is King Lear. Hamlet is the part all young actors want; Lear is the part all old actors want. Where Hamlet is about a character wanting to make sense of the world; Lear is about a character that has made sense of it and realised it’s not for them. King Lear explores what happens to a person when they’re stripped – literally and metaphorically – of their status. It asks what happens to the great and good when it’s their time to leave the stage. Will they be remembered, and if so, for what?

Lear on the heath.

Harwood’s creation, in another nod to Shakespeare, is a play within a play. Sir is playing Lear, but you get the sense Lear is playing him too. At the beginning, Norman (Ian McKellen), Sir’s dresser, informs Her Ladyship, Sir’s wife, about her husband’s uncommon behaviour. During the day a frenzy overtook him, causing him to disrobe in the streets and wail like Lear on the heath. Perturbed, Norman took him to hospital, believing he still lies there. Her Ladyship understands that this is curtains for tonight’s production and orders Madge, the Stage Manager, to cancel the play. Norman won’t countenance such a plan: still in theatre today the cliché, ‘the show must go on,’ pertains. During the Second World War, this was thought more so: with airwave and air raid warnings commonplace, the theatre offered people escape. Famously when Churchill was asked to re-direct art funding to the war effort, he quipped: “then what are we fighting for.” In a period that had yet to birth television, the stage was people’s emergency exit from the horrors of war.

Right on cue, Sir arrives from hospital, explaining how he checked himself out. Despite being clearly exhausted, he vows to perform. Concerned for his physical wellbeing, Her Ladyship protests. Concerned for his theatrical reputation, Norman complies. The dressing room dynamic that follows between Sir and Norman is delicious, the kind of stuff psychoanalytic therapists dream of. 

McKellen and Hopkins.

Norman and Sir's friendship is based on a shared view: they both love Sir. Norman is a working class lapdog: fawning and loving he will do whatever he’s ordered. While Sir sits slumped, appearing physically unable to perform, Norman awakens in him a zeal to rage forwards to the coming of the light. Essentially, it is a vicarious relationship where Norman lives his theatrical ambitions through Sir. After all, Norman knows the lines (he goes through them with Sir); he knows theatrical parlance (everyone is called “ducky”); to all extents and purposes, he is a resident of luvviedom; but for all of that, he is no actor. Unable to obtain his own dreams, he settles for sharing in someone else’s. Only the periodic reaches for the gin bottle shows he has any problem with this.

Just as King Lear moves from vanity to empathy, Sir does too. At the beginning, he is unkind to the other players, believing they’re a necessary evil to putting on a play. If he had it his own way, he would be Midsummer Night’s Dream’s Bottom and play all the parts. Moreover, he alleges that the repertory group are a “band of brothers” but really they’re subservient children to his tyrannical father. In performing Lear’s part with dwindling health, he learns the lessons of the character and returns to the dressing room aware he too has neglected those closest to him.

'In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is King.'

Ultimately, names are the thing in this play. Conventional Norman wants the stardom that his name denies; self-appointed Sir craves the fellowship that his ego prohibits. It is a play of dissatisfaction, one that I found hugely satisfying.

Fans of theatre: don't have regrets the size of Lear - watch this play.

The Dresser is available on BBC iPlayer.