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William Hayes as the devoted Norman crowns Colin McPhillamy as he prepares to portray King Lear in Palm Beach Dramaworks’ The Dresser / Photos by Curtis Brown
By Bill Hirschman
Illusions – those we create for others, those ones we create for ourselves, those we create for survival – are at the heart of this laudatory yet merciless exposé The Dresser, a portrait swirling around the most illusory element of all: theater.
Palm Beach Dramaworks excels in maximizing the script’s inquiry into theater artists’ rollercoaster ricocheting among subservience, fury, affection, disdain, self-centeredness, posturing, physical deterioration and mental collapse.
And its protagonists – heroes would be too acclamatory a noun — switch between surprising courage and shaking fear, between beauty and bombast – and back again. And throughout, they are tied to spinning those diverse illusions.
Credit the late Ronald Harwood’s 1980 script, J. Barry Lewis’ skilled direction and two arguably career-topping performances: Colin McPhillamy as Sir, the ego-driven classically over-the-top and over-the-hill actor-manager, and William Hayes as Norman, his alcoholic beyond-the-pale devoted backstage dresser, aide, servant, parent and coddler.
Certainly, The Dresser is a behind-the-scenes backstage drama about a third-rate Shakespearean theater troupe touring the provinces during the depths of blitzkrieg-laden World War II. But their strivings to stage their 277th threadbare production of King Lear has surprising resonances for 21st Century America when both societies are in a struggle for the survival of a culture and a moral compass.
With an hour to curtain and an air raid siren blaring, the stage manager and Sir’s actress-wife are frantically trying to decide whether to cancel the next performance because Sir was hospitalized after a binge and is now missing. Norman, who has known Sir’s every ploy over 16 years, argues that Sir will somehow show up in time – in some condition.
Colin McPhillamy
Indeed, the large-scale figure waddles in to the dressing room with some put-on elan, but then collapses in a mess seemingly impossible to resurrect in time to tackle one of the most difficult roles in the canon. In a breath-stopping moment, he starts begging to know his opening lines.
As Norman chatters like a nurse, a partner, a spouse, a friend and a slave, we watch as the two slowly, sloppily prepare as a co-dependent liaison struggling to make it possible for Sir to ascend the mountain. One joy of this play is seeing how between the oscillating push and pull, Norman helps Sir transform physically and psychologically. He dons a moustache, beard and luxurious hair, plus royal robes whose tattered state cause you to wonder if they, too, date back to the Middle Ages. His self-assurance ebbs and flows as the self-illusionary element of his talent similarly shuttles back and forth.
And – slight giveaway –Sir goes on and performs heroically as the theater is literally being bombed. But we see him at intermission and after the final curtain when things fall apart in the tragic final scenes of a kind of life.
Yet underneath it all, and there is a lot of all, Harwood, Lewis and the entire cast celebrate the incalculable magic and undefeatable optimism of theater as an illusionary art that justifiably requires, as a commitment.
And yet, again, this is not all celebration; no one makes excuses, it depicts all the warts and the illusions. But simultaneously there’s the prevailing love and the passion.
The spiraling journey is punctuated by the quick-witted cynical humor common to soldiers in trenches, ER nurses and life-chastened pessimists. The stage manager, certain that Sir will not appear in time, says to Norman, “We must face the facts.” To which, Norman instantly rejoins as if in a skit, “I’ve never done that in my life, your ladyship, and I don’t see why I should start now.”
And Harwood loves depicting the unique behind the scenes facets such as what artists have been required to do (and continue to do today) when someone utters the name of Shakespeare’s Scottish play: You must go out in the hall, turn around three times and spit on your hands.
To be fair, watching this steady movement toward tragedy is not the most uplifting holiday fare and the constant changes make it hard to stay atop of. And frankly there is no one you can unblinkingly root for, which is a testament to these artists’ commitment to the multiple levels of honesty. But it’s rare to see it done this well.
What Lewis, the creatives and the cast triumph in is clearly but subtly amping up the sense of danger that this is closing an era in these protagonists’ careers, in pre-war Britain and certainly this waning deteriorating type of theater.
And yet, characters repeatedly reference “struggle and survival” – even hope itself – in reference to Sir, the Lear production, theater as a whole, the country itself.
Hayes, who played Norman almost 20 years ago, nails the difficult role in which he coddles Sir at one point, explodes with anger at an ingenue with debatable ethics at another point. He can be ardent in his adulation for Sir, yet be effortlessly cynical and downright deceitful to mislead anyone including Sir.
Hanky in one back pocket and a bottle of liquor in the other, his long monologues aimed guiding an uncooperative Sir are amazingly engaging for the being near blather. Hayes (Dramaworks’ Producing Artistic Director since co-founding it 25 years ago) enlisted a coach to produce the authentic sounding accent. In virtual solos, that voice can cajole, coo, demand, instruct, be servile or commanding. His eyes can be haunted or consumed with concern, portraying a lifetime of tested respect and devotion.
William Hayes
For those who have seen McPhillamy’s varied performances such as the titular doomed monarch in Exit The King, this victory would normally not be a surprise. But if there ever was a role he was born to play, this is it. His Sir, his own performance and its place in the play are textbook depictions of the word “bravura.”
His Sir can boast, bleat, carry on, weep, collapse, can issues lengthy speeches of Shakespeare in a hyper ham mode no longer seen on modern stages. None of which equals his Sir’s grand pronouncements about theater. No matter how we think he is being honest or straightforward with Norman or his castmates, his Sir suddenly can be revealed as someone who not only spins illusions, but has succumbed to them for his own sanity and sense of self-worth.
In one particularly deft bit of playwriting, McPhillamy soars when Harwood depicts Sir coming offstage from the famed storm scene, which Sir amazingly has conquered as he hasn’t in years.
McPhillamy/Sir/Harwood rage with as much secret joy as fury, “Where was the storm? I ask for cataracts and hurricanes and I am given trickles and whistles. I demand oak-cleaving thunderbolts and you answer with farting flies. I am the wind and the spit and the fire and I am fed with nothing but muffled funeral drums. Christ Almighty, God forgive them, they know not what they do.” All three are in seventh heaven.
McPhillamy as Sir, Gary Cadwaller as Mr. Oxenby and Elizabeth Dimon as Madge the stage manager
Lewis masterfully orchestrates and paces the swelling risings and falls, the instant switches of the emotions and intents, the truth and self-serving illusions. And underneath he delivers the sense of an ever-closing of a fading lifestyle. In an early scene when Sir and Norman are left alone in the dressing room, Lewis has Sir sit on a couch, curled in a nearly fetal curve, clutching his shoes to his chest like a rag doll. But Lewis’ work is so understated that the pacing and tempo aren’t noticed by most audience members.
The supporting cast is equally fine including Denise Cormier as Sir’s wife (playing Cordelia) and Elizabeth Dimon as the business-like stage manager who we realize has unmet affection for Sir. Competently filling out the company are familiar Dramaworks regulars Dennis Creghan, Gary Cadwallader, David A. Hyland, Cliff Goulet, plus returning John Campagnuolo and Kelly Gibson.
Anne Mundell has designed wonderful scenery previously ranging from Arcadia to A Streetcar Named Desire. But she has eclipsed them with her textured backstage of a decrepit provincial theater – half as the principal actor’s dressing room and the other as the stage left area scattered with props like a carry-on coat of arms, sound machines and a score of detritus from previous productions.
Brian O’Keefe has equally scored creating the backstage workers’ workday dress and the actors’ dingy costumes showing decades of overuse. Kirk Bookman’s lighting design subtly drives the audience’s focus.
As with great theater, The Dresser may be constructed of illusions and be about those creating and falling for illusions, but they are illusions we should be grateful to see.
The Dresser at Palm Beach Dramaworks, 201 Clematis St., West Palm Beach, through Jan. 5. Info: (561) 514-4042; palmbeachdramaworks.org
McPhillamy as Sir, Gary Cadwaller as Mr. Oxenby and Elizabeth Dimon as Madge the stage manager
