The Dresser by Ronald Harwood is coming to the Flavel Arts Centre this Friday.

Dartmouth Players will be performing this tragic comedy in Dartmouth, set in the lives of a touring theatre company in the middle of the second world war.

Based in 1942, the play is set in a dressing room of a provincial theatre while bombs are dropping and air raid sirens are wailing.

The company are on a third-rate tour of the provinces, playing Shakespearean greats to the masses. They comfort themselves in the belief that they are fighting the war, but on the cultural front.

So successful has Ronald Harwood’s wonderful 1980 play been that it has been performed many times and been filmed twice.

The Dartmouth Players invite you backstage once again to marvel at the madly heroic attempt to stage King Lear in an air raid and to enjoy the pain and humour of this latter-day Lear and Fool. The Dartmouth Players will be performing on May 25 and May 26, with doors opening at 6pm, live music commencing at 7pm and The Dresser starting at 7.30pm. Vera Lynn (Terri-Kate Lee) will be singing pre-1940’s songs live from 7pm.