I really enjoyed the current revival of THE DRESSER last night, Ronald Harwood’s melancholy comic tragedy about a back stage wardrobe assistant coaxing and bullying an ageing actor through a production of King Lear during a WW2 bombing raid. Through this situation Harwood explores the futility we all feel from time to time using theatre life as a metaphor for existence.
I'm sending Stuart King to review the production in full at the official press night later in the week but watching the preview got me thinking what an extraordinary percentage of current or recent West End hits incorporate characters engaged in some kind of theatrical performance.
Let’s start with the Big Guy. Shakespeare’s MIDSUMMER NIGHT DREAM delighted audiences at the Globe this summer in a radical new interpretation, at its comic heart is a group of amateur actors rehearsing a play to be performed as part of a royal wedding celebration. His plays are full of occasions when he compares human existence to that of an actor. Most famous of all is the seven ages of man speech from AS YOU LIKE IT which begins “All the world’s a stage and all men and women merely players”, Hamlet claims “I have heard that guilty creatures sitting at a play, have, by the very cunning of the scene, been struck so to the soul that presently they have proclaimed their malefactions”. And there are lots more examples but perhaps the most beautiful and haunting Shakespeare quote about life viewed as theatre is MACBETH’s “Life's but a walking shadow, A poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”. Bleak!
There are a lot of musicals set back stage including of course the Andrew Lloyd Webber mega hit PHANTOM OF THE OPERA which takes place on, around, above and under the Paris Opera House. Another modern classic, BILLY ELLIOT is about an aspiring ballet dancer and in recent years West End audiences have also enjoyed revivals of KISS ME KATE, CABARET, A CHORUS LINE and SHOW BOAT all of which are about theatre folk. The great grand daddies of the modern musical, Rodgers and Hammerstein, regularly depict their characters preparing to give a performance including celebrated moments in THE SOUND OF MUSIC, THE KING AND I and SOUTH PACIFIC.
Some of the most successful comedies of contemporary theatre are also set with in the theatre. The hit comedy NOISES OFF take place backstage during a farce and the current long running hit THE PLAY THAT GOES WRONG and its sister show PETER PAN GOES WRONG (which is back in London for the Christmas season) both also present calamitous theatre companies.
It seems our appetite for a glimpse behind the curtain is insatiable, we’ll wait to see how the critic’s respond to THE DRESSER but based on the preview I saw it’s a funny and poignant new addition to our examination of life, through the prism of show business.
Sad news that after nine years the West End must say goodbye to the popular musical, JERSEY BOYS.