The Dresser

“What happens backstage is always true drama. And often pure comedy.”

London during the Blitz, and a Shakespearean company keeps touring through the bombing, dragging its scenery from one battered theater to the next. Norman (Tom Courtenay) is the dresser to the head of the company, an aging, tyrannical actor known only as Sir (Albert Finney), and he spends his days holding the man together before each night's King Lear. Peter Yates keeps us in the cramped wings and dressing rooms, where devotion and dependence are hard to tell apart.