Word: sir
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...handful of parties that formed in the 1970s to oppose the despotic rule of Sir Eric Gairy were gathered together in the New Jewel Movement after its Marxist leader, Maurice Bishop, took power in 1979. By and large, the N.J.M. followed Bishop to the grave in October. The only existing political group on the island is the Grenadian National Party, which has fewer than two dozen members and whose leader lies crippled by arthritis on the sister island of Carriacou. Many Grenadians, moreover, are leery of a return to democratic institutions that were a mixed blessing even before Gairy...
...just want everything to be lovely," says Norman. As credos go it is modest enough, and in normal times it has served him well in his career as dresser and dogsbody to the actor-manager-spoken of only as "Sir"-whose little Shakespearean company is touring the English provinces. The trouble is, the times are out of joint. World War II's air-raid sirens have a way of going off in the middle of the old boy's soliloquies. Worse, the years have taken their toll. As Sir says, anticipating his 227th performance of King Lear...
...Indeed, Sir has become the thing he plays, a Lear-like creature wandering the blasted heath that is wartime Britain. The women of his company are very rough analogues to Lear's daughters, while Norman is certainly meant to be understood as the Fool. But Ronald Harwood's adaptation of his own play does not force these comparisons too hard. It is perfectly possible to enjoy The Dresser simply as a backstage fable, rich in the full-tilt emotional exaggeration of plays and pictures that try to catch showfolk off guard, offstage. Or as a fairly acute study...
...such posterity as the film vaults grant. On its face his is a comic turn, an impersonation of a homosexual impersonating a nanny to a grownup child. But his mincing rage for order has deeper roots; this small and isolated backstage world has offered him, until Sir started disrupting it, an asylum from the larger world he could never manage. Subtle observation and marvelously controlled invention mark Courtenay's work...
Finney is a revelation. His was almost a secondary role in the theater, largely because Sir's performances were observed and discussed by the other characters but never seen by the audience. In adapting play to film, Harwood and the always sensible Peter Yates have chosen to show Sir at work. And Finney has chosen to be as good as he can be as Lear. This redeems Sir from the bombastic egocentricity of his dressing-room self, placing a humanizing glaze on his hamminess. It also makes the ironic point that for many actors a role is the only...