Ronald Harwood worked with Donald Wolfit for five years, and though The Dresser at Duke of York’s Theatre is not about Wolfit, Harwood acknowledges that the play clearly draws on that experience.
Wolfit was the last of the great virtuoso actor-managers, who infamously surrounded himself with inferior actors so that he could shine all the more. He was never afraid to ham it up and upstage everybody. His greatest role was King Lear. Ronald Harwood concentrates on the relationship with his devoted dresser and the parallels between them and Lear and the Fool. Ken Stott is magnificent as a spent force and I have not seen Reece Shearsmith do better: camp, waspish and, finally, deeply moving.
