The Dresser

The Dresser (2015) is an intimate backstage drama you can watch online on iFILM. Director Richard Eyre filmed Ronald Harwood's play for the BBC and handed its two leads to Anthony Hopkins and Ian McKellen. Wartime England, a shabby provincial theatre, air-raid sirens overhead. The curtain on King Lear goes up in an hour, but the ageing actor-manager known only as Sir has wandered off, shattered and incoherent, with no one else who can carry the part.

Holding the night together falls to Norman, the loyal dresser who has spent decades buttoning Sir into costume and coaxing him onstage. McKellen takes Norman, Hopkins plays the burnt-out lion of an actor, and the company fills out with Emily Watson, Vanessa Kirby and Edward Fox. The film lives in the cramped dressing room, where devotion and resentment blur into something close to a marriage. Two of Britain's finest trading lines in a single small space is the whole reason to watch — catnip for anyone who loves theatre and quiet, spectacle-free drama. Stream The Dresser (2015) online on iFILM.