STAGE REVIEW : Saddleback College Cast Does a Dapper Job on ‘The Dresser’

In Ronald Harwood’s “The Dresser,” Norman has few illusions about his place in the world. For more than 20 years, he has lived off of, for and because of “Sir,” the aging centerpiece of a ragged Shakespeare company barely surviving in England’s outback.

As Sir’s dresser, he not only keeps the actor’s wigs, makeup and costumes in order, but massages this very difficult man’s difficult ego, gets him up for the performances that blur together and tries to keep him healthy. Norman knows that when Sir retires (or dies), he’ll probably be shown the door. And what will he do without Sir? Where will he go? It’s a symbiotic relationship, an equivalent of the shark and pilot fish.

Through Harwood’s excellent writing, this joining of expedience and need is volatile, touching, even a little depraved. “The Dresser,” an exceptional play, requires well-calibrated acting to expose the psychological layers, which it finds in Saddleback College’s accomplished production. The theater department’s entry in this year’s American College Theater Festival benefits from Patrick Fennell’s sure direction and Michael Bielitz’s intelligent, affecting performance as Norman.

In Norman, we are introduced to one of those quietly remarkable people who exist on a plane of reduced expectations, someone who has seen greatness beyond himself--in this case, in Sir’s acting--and knows that being close to it is the next best thing to having it. He also sees the satisfactions in manipulating greatness.

Bielitz’s character takes pride in maneuvering his man, of pulling just the right strings before each curtain raising. During an intermission of a disastrous “King Lear,” Norman tells Sir that the audience is twittering about his portrayal, calling it a combination of “Michelangelo and Blake”--a fat lie but one that serves its purpose with the vainglorious Sir.

But it is all more than a power game for Norman. This is duty as well, and there is a sense that he genuinely cares for Sir--it is, after all, a marriage of sorts. Bielitz has to combine love and loathing, respect and disgust, and he does. Even his body language, full of coiled reserve and self-consciousness, communicates the attitude of a subordinate whose mixed emotions sometimes confuse him.

Cole Andersen’s Sir is no easy man to work for, much less love. Deathly ill, prone to fits of weeping and memory loss, close to insanity, if not already there, and ready to rage at Norman or anyone else who disappoints him, he can be a pretty unattractive character.

That is only part of the man, though. He also understands what beauty is and, as Norman well knows, has paid for living a life of art with his own instability. Andersen does overreach at times--the role is full of histrionic banana peels, and he slips every now and then--but he nonetheless evinces Sir’s self-absorbed complexity.

Nobody fully understands him, not even Norman, who eventually finds himself betrayed by the man. Sir’s wife (Teri Ciranna) doesn’t have a hold of him either, but at least she realizes that the coddling only speeds his decline.

‘THE DRESSER’

A Saddleback College production of Ronald Harwood’s drama. Directed by Patrick Fennell. With Michael Bielitz, Teri Ciranna, Karen Dalzell, Jane Hebson, Cole Andersen, James A. Reiss, Steve Casey, Richard Damigella, Patrick L. Healey, Stephen Brogdon and Christopher A. Hunter. Sets by Wally Huntoon. Costumes and makeup by Charles Castagno. Lighting by Kevin Cook. Plays Thursday to Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m. at the campus’ Studio Theatre, 28000 Marguerite Parkway, Mission Viejo. Tickets: $5-$7. (714) 582-4656.