BWW Reviews: Newhouse and Nicholson Deliver a Compelling THE DRESSER at Gamut

There is an old folk tale in which a father asks his daughters how much they love him. Two declare extravagantly, while the third says she loves him "as fresh meat loves salt." The father is offended and banishes her, while the two more overtly adoring ones drive him into the ground. Depending who you ask, this is either an old Jewish folk story or an old English one. In either case, if it sounds a bit like the story of King Lear, you'd be right, since Shakespeare was fond of using older sources (though the salt stayed home in his version of the tale). But the idea that the truest love is not always the most clearly expressed, and that therefore it's ignored by its recipient, still holds true today.

It's the story of Lear, and it's also the story of Ronald Harwood's THE DRESSER, first on the West End in 1980 and on Broadway in 1981. An Olivier and Tony nominee, it's been a classic from the start, partly because of the overt Lear metaphor, partly because it's a simple and gripping story. Norman is the dresser for "Sir," an unnamed, aging Shakespearian actor/manager of the old school, who is trying to hold his traveling repertory troupe together during the Blitz while Norman tries to hold "Sir" together to get him on stage. Plays are interrupted for air raids, "Sir's" wife has gained weight during their marriage and is now perhaps a trice too substantial to be carried about on stage as Cordelia in KING LEAR, and Sir himself is feeling his age and starting to lose his lines.

THE DRESSER is currently onstage at Gamut Classic Theatre, living up to the show's reputation and starring J. Clark Nicholson as the deteriorating but "show must go on" trouper, Sir, and David Newhouse as Norman, Sir's dresser. The English theatre dresser is more than a costume changer. In the great days of English theatre, leading actors' personal dressers, who stuck with their employers like glue, were jacks of all trades - confidants, launderers, tea makers, drink pourers, conspirers, nursemaids, hangover-fixers, masseurs, and whatever else their employers needed. Playwright Harwood knew of what he wrote when he created THE DRESSER, having been dresser for Sir Donald Wolfit, though the picture he paints of Sir is not that of Sir Donald. Is Sir losing his mind, or merely exhausted struggling through eight traveling - and daily-rotating - shows a week? Is Madge, the stage manager (Tara Herwig), more concerned about Sir or about the company - and which should she be worrying about?

Newhouse plays Norman as a dazzlingly overworked cockeyed optimist, ready to do whatever it takes to get Sir off his seat and on the stage, always ready with a cup of tea or a story about a real or imagined friend undergoing the same trials and tribulations as Sir himself, a man who moves at a frenetic pace to keep his employer looking - and sounding - like the real or imagined star that he is. Because Sir may or may not really have been knighted, and he may or may not be a major Shakespearian actor outside his own imagination. That's at least partly for the audience to decide, though Norman devotedly serves his employer as if Sir is Sir Lancelot, or at least Sir Larry, rather than an imaginary giant of the stage. Whether Sir notices, or even cares, about Norman's devoted drudgery on his behalf is another matter entirely.

Sir, in Clark Nicholson's hands, is tired, with the weight of the company and his own parts, if not the world, on his shoulders; he had a breakdown earlier that day, but is he losing his sanity or is he merely overworked and overtired? Nicholson's own vote is for exhaustion, and Sir's desperate desire for a good nap pours off of Nicholson in spades. It's Lear today, but he's starting to do his makeup for Othello and spouting the opening lines for Richard III - he could be dealing with mental deterioration, but it's just as likely that his insane performance schedule is starting to catch up with him. Whichever show he's in tonight, he's ready for it... as long as Norman can get him in costume and can feed him his lines until he's got the right show firmly in his head. Once Sir is onstage, he's "on", and Nicholson does a fine job of displaying that Sir can still pull himself together in an instant in the presence of footlights. The chemistry between Newhouse and Nicholson is intense, as if Norman and Sir have in fact worked together like a pair of twins for well over a decade - they complement each other, but each knows exactly how to drive the other insane. And with Norman, as with his wife, Her Ladyship (Cynthia Charles), Sir is amazingly able to take everything he is offered from those closest to him, and the people themselves, for granted.

Just how far Sir takes Norman and Norman's dizzying array of personal services for granted is made abominably clear at the end, when Norman discovers the extent of Sir's neglect of Norman's efforts, and Newhouse is at his most powerful then, as he encounters the notes in Sir's journal. It's perhaps fortunate for Her Ladyship that Sir hasn't yet made notes... or omitted them... about his marriage, because it's in his journal that we discover just how Sir believes the universe, or at least his universe, to be ordered.

Cynthia Charles as Her Ladyship is a fine study in wifely concern balanced by work considerations. She's not afraid of being abandoned as a spouse, but being supplanted as a Cordelia. Amber Mann's Irene, the young actress torn between flattery and offense at Sir's attentions to her - and the fact that she weighs less than Her Ladyship, which is in his mind a purely practical detail - gives an equally nice performance. Tara Herwig, as Madge, balances Norman's concern for Sir with a business concern for the company's ability to handle its upcoming performances, every bit as non-maternal as Norman is cosseting of Sir.

The show is directed by Dan Burke, who also fills in on one of the minor roles as a courtier in LEAR (there are a few fine local actors taking these parts), which occurs "onstage" throughout the production as Sir goes on and off the stage during his troupe's performance. Burke has a nice sense of timing here, and has also arranged for a nicely handled multi-level set (courtesy of set designer Ian Potter) that makes the dance between dressing room, backstage, and the stage for LEAR make sense in Gamut's space. It's a very tight production, centering on that chemistry between Newhouse and Nicholson, on Newhouse's frenetic, often comic physical movement and Nicholson's physical depiction of Sir's exhaustion. And as small as Gamut's entire space is, the intensity is enhanced by the feeling that one might be sitting in Sir's dressing room beside them.

At Gamut Classic Theatre through March 9, and, though it's a drama, infused with many great moments of comedy, far more so than mere comic relief. Newhouse's frequent monologues and near-monologues while keeping Sir occupied are sometimes ridiculously funny, as they're meant to be. Call 717-238-4111 or visit gamutplays.org for tickets.

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