Players add warmth to cold-hearted show

“THE DRESSER”, (Lyceum Theatre), by Paul Genty

WHAT is striking about seeing this famous Manchester-born play for the first time in years is to realise that first viewings can be deceptive.

Ronald Harwood’s comic-drama is, on the surface, a relatively light piece about a wartime Shakespeare touring company with its wayward performers and occasionally amusing situations.

Harwood based the play on his early experiences as dresser to Sir Donald Wolfit, the old-school actor-manager whose knighthood was gained more on his many years of taking Shakespeare to the provincial masses than for the quality of his productions or his performances.

Closer inspection actually reveals the play to be decidedly lacking in warmth towards its characters — with a sense that Harwood was glad to get out, rather than fondly revisiting old ground.

“Sir”, the actor-manager, has led his group of third-rate actors — including his ageing wife (Joan Duffin) — to a town too far, and proceeds to have a breakdown of health and mind a couple of hours before a performance of “King Lear”.

Despite this, Sir’s sense of duty and ego demands he drag himself from his hospital bed as if about to go on for his finest hour for the Royal Shakespeare Company, though it takes some bullying, cajoling and gentle easing of his boss into the right frame of mind by long-suffering dresser, Norman, to get him ready.

The play is not only about the two men — Norman, who treats his employer with far greater deference than Sir’s station demands, and Sir, who believes his own publicity, but about the ramshackle state of provincial theatre in wartime, with companies surviving on the invalided out and medically unfit for service, on doting spinsters as company managers (a shrewishly admirable performance from Sue Widdall) and clearly too-elderly actresses in unsuitable roles.

The best way to make progress through this otherwise rather cold-hearted evening is the way director Melvyn Bates does for the Lyceum Players.

Philip Weetman isn’t renowned for his stentorian authority but for comedy, and this works quite well here as he plays Sir warmly and humorously, but without falling into parody.

Ean Burgon as Norman doesn’t immediately strike one as good casting for the slight, homosexual Norman, being tall and hearty, but his warmth conveys the utter, hateful adoration Norman has for his boss and the company, his surrogate family.

The evening moves smoothly along on a simple, suitably tatty set and perhaps despite itself, is enjoyable and entertaining.