The Dresser
Ron Harwood was a huge influence on my understanding of the theatre in a couple of ways. Firstly, I loved his play The Dresser, which I’d seen in a hilarious and heart breaking film version starring Albert Finney as “Sir” and Tom Courtenay as Norman. Next, he’d written a wonderful documentary series for BBC TV called ‘All the World’s a Stage’. The series was sprawling and bold in its story of the long history of the theatre. Harwood, being an actor and writer, believed very much in the need to show the theatre as a living and breathing creature. So, not only did he talk about early forms of theatre. But he got them to actually build replicas of older theatres and stages, in order to put on plays from those periods. This blew my mind and introduced me to the God of the theatre ‘Dionysus’ and a sense that I belonged to an ancient art form.
