Review: SJ Rep's "The Dresser"

Courtesy of SJ Rep

A touching drama about life, theatre and relationships during World War II. A small touring company is set to perform "King Lear" amidst a lead actor/theatre manager who is going senile and several bombings and air raid sirens. This play focuses heavily on Sir's relationship with his cast, especially his dresser, and his rapidly declining health.

This play is based on the real life story of Ronald Harwood, a dresser to Donald Wolfit, actor-manager in the 1930s. Dramaturg, Karen Altree Peimme, does a wonderful job of giving the history of this play in the playbill.


While this cast was a decent size, almost all of the acting falls upon Sir (Ken Ruta), Norman (James Carpenter) and Her Ladyship (Rachel Harker). It's quite some stamina for an actor to go nearly 3 hours performing with little to no breaks. Performances were outstanding all around. I think that Ruta did a great job as Sir by portraying a sincere fragility and confusion due to his condition. Carpenter was absolutely brilliant as Sir's caregiver and his heartbreaking situation in the end nearly had me in tears. Harker was wonderful as Sir's longtime lover and her expression of frustration with Sir in Act II was so genuine. Having been both a stage manager and pined after men who were clearly not interested in me romantically made it easy for me to fall in love with Madge (Lynne Soffer). Irene (Blythe Foster) as the ingenue was a perfectly cast. She did wonderfully as the fame hungry young actress, without being overly slutty. For some reason, Caperenter's portrayal of Norman really reminded me of Sheldon from the "Big Bang Theory". Perhaps it's that both characters have that same sort of knack for orderliness about things and objects. And while my SJSU boys didn't have a lot of stage time I still think they did a great job.

Courtesy of SJ Rep

I was incredibly impressed by the set design. I kept being distracted by the dressing room in the beginning. There was so much stuff crammed into one small room/set piece. I wished to be able to go down and explore it fully. And then when it's hauled offstage to reveal the rest of space, a magnificent replication of a backstage area, my jaw practically hit the floor. I loved the recreation. And I loved the use of space when the "actors" for "King Lear" played to an imaginary house at stage right. And the use of doubling the actual audience for the "King Lear" audience was great.

This is only my second time watching a show at the SJ Rep. Previously I had seen Lynn Redgrave perform in "The Bog of Cats" in 2001, so I didn't really remember much about the space. I honestly, as per usual, had no clue what this play was about or entailed. I just knew that some of my local theatre acquaintances were in this production. While I really enjoyed this show, it was...long. Very long. About the first 30 minutes or so it's just Norman and her Ladyship talking about Sir, what happened to him and his declining health. There isn't a lot of physical action or movement, although Norman does a great job of being so flamboyant and a wonderful storyteller I didn't feel too much like spacing out. I had gone as a chaperon for Leigh High School and I have to say this show just wasn't appropriate for the freshmen/sophomore level. There were even some junior high students there. I heard  a lot of comments after wards about how boring it was and they just didn't "get it." Honestly, the language is verbose and the show lengthy. Perhaps, it's because I'm an actress/theatre person that this didn't really bother me. I was drawn in by the character's heartaches and really felt for them. I would certainly recommend this show to an adult audience. I really just don't think that younger audiences will have the patience to sit through or come away with really connecting with the characters.