The Dresser - Review

Duke of York's Theatre, London


***


Written by Ronald Harwood
Directed by Sean Foley

Reece Shearsmith and Ken Stott

There's a timeless nostalgia to Ronald Harwood's The Dresser that captures a particular snapshot of England during the Second World War. With the country's fit young men called up to fight, it's left to the "cripples, old men and Nancy boys" to tread the boards. Having served as actor/manager Sir Donald Wolfit's dresser during the 1950s, Harwood's experience provides a bedrock of credibility to the period piece.

Revolving around Sir (played by Ken Stott) and his dresser Norman (Reece Shearsmith), the text plays out during a performance of King Lear. Whilst not a pre-requisite, a working knowledge of Lear helps - for what emerges on stage is not just the parable of Lear and his all-licensed Fool being projected onto Sir and Norman, but we also watch the ageing actor crawl toward death. 

Stott and Shearsmith perform well, with Stott capturing the tragic decline of Sir's body and mind, as Shearsmith, knowingly and in a flurry of campiness after sixteen years of service, devotedly tends to the old man needs. Foley however fails to take his leading actors truly into their characters' skins. There's a lack of chemistry between the pair that's manifest in a lack of empathy from the audience. The second half (which bore witness to a number of post-interval empty seats) drags in a way that Harwood would never have wished, and though Shearsmith is racked with grief at the play’s denouement it's hard, in this production, to share his pain.

There's fine work from the supporting cast whose collection of modest roles set the era of time, place and also emotions, perfectly. Harriet Thorpe's Her Ladyship is a well turned battleaxe of a wife to Sir, while Selina Cadell exquisitely captures an ageing spinster’s pain whose love for the actor had never been returned.

Runs until 14th January 2017, then transfers to Chichester

Photo credit: Hugo Glendinning

Farinelli and the King - Review

Duke of York's Theatre, London


****


Written by Claire van Kampen
Directed by John Dove

Mark Rylance

At the age of 32, at the very height of a superstardom today reserved for the Hollywood A-list, the great 18th Century castrato Farinelli turned his back on the stage, never to return, to sing for only one man – Philippe V, the King of Spain. The King, suffering from a madness brought on by depression, could only find solace and sanity in Farinelli’s heavenly tones.

This apparently true historical titbit is the basis of Claire Van Kampen’s Farinelli and the King, recently transferred from the Globe’s Sam Wanamaker Playhouse to the Duke of York’s Theatre. At the play’s heart is an attempt to imagine the relationship between these two men, both ‘Kings’ in their own spheres and explain their friendship. And it is in exploring the dichotomy of these private, ordinary men and the public roles that they were forced to play that the piece is most interesting. After telling Farinelli how he became King, Philippe asks ‘When were you robbed of your normality?’

That dichotomy is given literal form in the case of Farinelli since the character is played by two men on any given night – Sam Crane taking a speaking role and counter-tenor Iestyn Davies joining him on stage to portray the singing superstar. This device, no doubt born out of necessity (countertenors of Davies’ quality are rare enough without expecting them to also be capable of acting the lead in a West End play), works well. Crane’s diffident ordinariness is a fine contrast to Davies’ strutting, golden-voiced megastar and it is Davies who provides many of the show’s highlights, aided by Robert Howarth's fine band. 

Of course, most of the audience had come not so see Farinelli but the King. Few actors are capable of playing bewildered, childlike madness as magnetically as Mark Rylance. At turns broadly comic, at others brooding and sinister, it is a predictably fine performance by one of the finest stage actors of his generation. And yet, there is perhaps a suspicion that a part so obviously written for him (van Kampen is his wife) has resulted in a one that he could do with his eyes closed without ever really needing to be at his glorious best – essentially a watered down version of his Richard II. 

Whilst the sometimes thin script provides fine moments of both humour and pathos, it at times straying dangerously close to Blackadder territory. Melody Grove in particular, has a rather thankless ‘one note’ task as Philippe’s long-suffering wife Isabella and neither she nor Crane convince in a predictable and possibly unnecessary love triangle.

Thank goodness, then, for the glorious music and the sublime voice of Davies, whose interjections bolster the piece. The scintillatingly beautiful “Lascia ch’io pianga” that closes the play is as memorable a moment as you will see on stage all year.

Runs until 5th December 2015