We of the theatre see nothing odd in the notion that the playhouse is a sacred temple of our art and that all those privileged to make a living therein, regardless of their particular flaws, deserve respect.

Not to get maudlin or sentimental, I must warn all who will be fortunate enough to see “The Dresser” during its four-week run at North Coast Repertory Theatre that this occasion is going to be quite special for theatre-folk, on many levels.

Ronald Harwood wrote the play as fond homage to an institution now passed: the actor-managers who, crisscrossing the British Isles with less than stellar troupes, made the great classical repertoire centered upon Shakespeare come alive for generations of audiences in one of the world’s richest gardens of theatre.

Harwood himself was an actor in one of the last of these companies, supporting Sir Donald Wolfit (1902-1968), whose reputation rests largely upon his work in “the unfashionable theatre,” Harwood’s phrase.

The playwright also doubled, for part of his time with Wolfit, as the star’s personal dresser, and his appreciation, centered on just such a relationship, is intended as much for the faceless theatrical dogsbodies as for the featured players.

The boss in this play is not Wolfit, Harwood has been at pains to emphasize, nor is Norman, the dresser, autobiographical. But Harwood also freely admits that this rich and fascinating play is based on his time as a backstage valet, the job from whom no master can have secrets.

Director David Ellenstein, himself born into a theatrical family, has chosen to head his cast two other high-profile members of the profession: Jonathan McMurtry, nearing his 50th anniversary as a San Diego favorite, and Sean Sullivan, a second-generation actor who grew up on San Diego stage. (There’s more along these lines, but you see the drift, right?)

The tells of a English provincial day, halfway through World War II, that begins in panic, with the aged star peeling off his cloths and running through the rain in extravagant despair, and ends, despite the bombs falling outside and the crises climaxing within, after his 227th appearance as King Lear.

The performance may be a success – reports vary – but Norman’s job in pasting his boss together by curtain-time is an awesome triumph of will, fueled by brandy and fierce inertia.

Sullivan is rock-solid throughout, handling Norman’s twee manner with neither caricature nor innuendo and never letting the howls of frustration be heard. McMurtry is exactly the champ one would expect, shaping the role with innumerable layers of lacquered nuance and subscribing an arc at once grand, pitiful, typical and truthful.

Susan Denaker is sweetly vague and distracted as the star’s wife and Lynne Griffin is depressing in the accuracy with which she plays the long-suffering stage manager. Kali Kirk, as the pert apprentice who slightly misinterprets the star’s attentions, and Jason Maddy and Mark Petrich as a pair of supporting players (“Old men, cripples and nancy-boys” is all Herr Hitler has left for Shakespeare, laments the star.) are just fine.

Marty Burnett has worked his usual minor magic with the scenery and Michelle Hunt Souza’s costumes seem about right. Matt Novotny’s lighting skillfully illuminates only what’s necessary and Sam Lerner’s sound mix makes frightful dins on cue.

I am sorry that Ellenstein chose to leave out the final bits of scene for Kirk, Maddy and Petrich, a comfortable and telling trio of wrapped-up loose ends, but otherwise it’s hard to quibble over the staging and the shaping of this fine production.

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