The Dresser, review: Matthew Kelly and Julian Clary’s double act is all sighs and no bite

In the autumn of his career Sir Ronald Harwood enjoyed a burst of success as a Hollywood screenwriter. But when he died last September, at 85, the instant reference-point was The Dresser, the play that made his name in 1980 and which has a claim to be one of the finest and funniest plays ever written about the theatre.

It was steeped in Harwood’s own experiences as a young thespian pup, relatively fresh off the boat from South Africa, attending Donald Wolfit, the tireless actor-manager who was part mighty legend, part living dinosaur. It portrays a grand old stager known as Sir and the middle-aged dresser, Norman, who fussily accompanies him on a seemingly endless tour of the provinces – his killing schedule observed in early 1942, when German bombs were still falling. Over the years, it has attracted some of our finest players.

The double act between Albert Finney and Tom Courtenay on screen, just three years after the Manchester premiere, is as close to definitive as it gets. Anthony Hopkins and Ian McKellen had a mixed-results stab at it for the BBC in 2015, but a year later in the West End, Ken Stott and Reece Shearsmith got the chemistry right, a due mix of brittle-meets-biting repartee and bubbling sadness.

When the 40th anniversary revival – Covid-delayed – was announced in 2019, with Matthew Kelly as Sir and Julian Clary as Norman, my heart sank. Kelly has re-earned his spurs as an actor, after his years as a TV presenter, but Clary, despite the odd past theatrical foray of note, looked anomalous, if superficially a snug fit for the part. Harwood gives the sidekick waspish lines galore, as he exasperatedly tends to Sir mid-breakdown ahead, aptly, of his 227th performance as that crazed Shakespearean ruin, King Lear.

As it turns out, despite a sometimes trepidatious manner and marionette-like movements, Clary makes Norman his own, and in ways refreshingly unClary-like. His crisp enunciation brings out the camp inflections, and air of innuendo, to Norman’s patter – “I can be vicious when roused”. But there’s no sense, as with the Palladium panto, of his playing to the gallery. With his grey air and lonely, long-suffering aura, denoted by sly swigs of the brandy, Clary gives us a Vanya of the velvet curtain, thanklessly toiling for his self-involved superior. He guards and goads his master, who can’t at first remember his lines.

If there’s a drawback to Terry Johnson’s production, surprisingly, it’s Kelly himself. He grouches and slouches nicely enough in the lead role, a man-baby in long-johns, comically pricking up his ears at word of a full-house. But he lacks the tyrannical regality that should have those minions quaking, and the usually silly manufacture of over-the-top sound effects when Sir is ploughing through King Lear's storm scene could do with even more thunder from him too.

The evening should feel like the climax of a larger than life career; instead you’re watching a tall, wilting man whose life-force is bleakly ebbing. Kelly needs to stoop less to conquer.

Until Sat. Tickets: 01225 448815; theatreroyal.org.uk; then touring