If you have seen "The Dresser" once you would not like to see it twice. Even less you would like to see another version with Ian McKellen and Anthony Hopkins, if you saw the real version with Albert Finney and Tom Courtenay. Hopkins is all right and lives up to the role, but McKellen plays it down completely by overacting and exaggerating, appearing constantly drunk, while Courtenay never appeared drunk in spite of his prudent drinking. Emily Watson is also all right, while Edward Fox appears as a surprise in a role very out of his style, the fool unmasked as a modest gentleman. It's an interesting play but a poor travesty deep in the shadow of Shakespeare, and although the Blitz is used as an efficient background, it never becomes a drama, in spite of Hopkins' passionate outbursts. Donald Wolfit was a great actor with a company of his own, but both Finney and Courtenay are fruits having fallen some distance off from his tree.
Review of The Dresser
