| Richard Burton: Sculpture, Stage Plays, Television Dramas, Book Launch, Biographies, Radio Feature & Commemoration Events |
Richard Burton |
| A Look-back and Guide , Centenary Year , December 2, 2025 |
The centenary of the birth-year of Richard Burton was marked throughout 2025. Angela V John published her biography of Philip Burton. She made many appearances on public platforms to speak about book and man; he was not just the artistic maker of Richard Burton but led a long and rich creative life in his own right. The venues included the National Theatre in May in conversation with Welsh drama expert David Cottis. The film “Mr Burton” had a big-screen release and was critically well-received. The Welsh National Theatre, that was founded in January, produced a late autumn surprise. Matthew Rhys appeared as Burton in a reprise of Mark Jenkins' “Playing Burton”. Earlier productions of “Playing Burton” are reviewed below. Other reviews and articles as follows: 2 April 2024: Theatre: The Motive and the Cue Jack Thorne's award-winning play about Richard Burton preparing for "Hamlet" directed by Gielgud in 1964 * * * * 5 August 2013: Television: Bio-drama on Richard Burton “Burton and Taylor” * * * * 29 November 2012: Book: Chris Williams, Dai Smith, the Richard Burton “Diaries” launch in Swansea “Dai Smith begins with a warm, incisive, personally felt introduction. It is revealed that the Smith and Williams connection goes back to a time when a young PhD student was called to come round and change his supervisor’s car tyre. What is palpable is the sense of connection that Burton represents. An audience member laments the fact of the burial in Switzerland. Williams, in Burton’s defence, says that Celigny, and his adored book room, were where he experienced most happiness. “...Dai Smith’s sense for Burton’s unshakable Welshness expresses itself in the phrase that, for all the mega-stardom, he remained “Port Talbot rapscallion Dicky Jenkins” all his life.” * * * * 15 August 2012: Radio: Publication of Richard Burton's Diaries "Inner Voices- the Burton Diaries” is a mesmerising hour. It soars for a simple reason. Radio focuses on what made Richard Burton great, his voice." * * * * 24 January 2012, 25 January 2012: Biography: Tom Rubython on Richard Burton * * * * 23 January 2012: Television: "Burton Y Gyfrinach" "S4C’s film for Christmas covers a single day in June 1968 in Switzerland. On that day Richard Burton’s elder brother Ifor fell and broke his neck. The devisers of this piece wander in that no-man's land of dramatised documentary. The facts of that day may never be known. That is enough; they need not be known. So the film is neither documentary, since it is not tethered to those facts that the biographers record. But nor is it drama with that genre’s complexity and wider resonance.” * * * * 1 July 2011: Sculpture: Richard Burton celebration at RWCMD “An early job had been as delivery boy with the Co-op. The shortest despatch would take a strangely long time; the Co-op bicycle was often to be seen parked outside the local Carnegie Library. On his travels his book bag was always there. His love of writing, they say, eclipsed his love of acting. Burton’s correspondents covered an enormous range, not just fellow actors but Stephen Spender and Christopher Isherwood, J K Galbraith and A L Rowse, even President Nixon.” * * * * 30 June 2011: Public Event: Richard Burton celebration at RWCMD “Lastly, Victor Spinetti came on stage not just as a fellow actor and friend but as an early alumnus of the Royal College. That his larger-than-life gusto infected those he worked with is clear. But Richard Burton is different from other actors. The difference is that he left notebooks, three hundred thousand words worth of observation and inner experience. “His notebook for 10th January 1969 runs “the more I read about man and his maniacal ruthlessness and his murdering envious scatological soul the more I realize that he will never change. Our stupidity is immortal, nothing will ever change it. The same mistakes, the same prejudices, the same injustice, the same lusts wheel endlessly around the parade-ground of the centuries. Immutable and ineluctable. I wish I could believe in a God of some kind but I simply cannot.” * * * * 21 October 2010: Theatre: “Burton” “The physical resemblance is startling. Director Hugh Thomas opens Gwynne Edwards’ play with a light on Rhodri Miles’ tilted face. Faces are rich with different expressions but there is a rightward tilt in which the look of Richard Burton is uncannily caught. That seductive baritone of a voice is inimitable but the tone and phrasing, a stream of syllables on a single outward breath, are superbly rendered. The time is the early 1970’s. Burton, with thirty-three films behind him, is in his exile of a home in Celigny, Switzerland. Rhodri Miles is in thin black polo neck, dark trousers, a cardigan and medallion. A glass never leaves his hand. The decanter on the trolley, replete with soda siphon and gaudy ice bucket, is steadily drained dry.” * * * * 6 December 2009: Biography: Michael Munn on Richard Burton “The most revealing aspect of Munn's book is the degree of pain that Burton suffered. It is known that in late life he had to undergo a perilous operation for a spine coated in crystals of alcohol. The alcohol had a cause. It had started, Munn says, when a prank of a laced drink caused the student Burton to fall down a staircase. The event was the cause on and off of pain for the rest of his life and Munn records later effects on stage and film sets.” * * * * 17 December 2004: Theatre: "Playing Burton" “Brian Mallon has to play Richie Jenkins playing Richard Burton playing Hamlet, Dr Faustus, Antony, Petruchio et al and here in Wales has to convince far more than he has to in LA, Dublin and New York, where he has been highly praised (not least by Norman Mailer)” * * * * 15 December 2004: Theatre: "Playing Burton" “Whenever I play Shakespeare, no matter what the play, I’m awe-struck by the depth of his understanding of the human soul.” Mark Jenkins has a similar depth of understanding of the human character, his thoughts will go beneath the skin of the characters he creates and his words embody them with such a rounded humanity that one starts to wonder if his Burton is even more real than the real Richard Burton.” * * * * 7 January 2004: Theatre: "Playing Burton" “This magnificent show is an absolute must-see for Richard Burton aficionados and lovers of theatre everywhere. “Now in its twelfth year, Playing Burton has played at the Sydney Opera House, off-Broadway, Los Angeles and is a truly world-class play, right on our doorstep.” * * * * 8 September 2003: Theatre: "Playing Burton" “Mallon’s obvious fluency with Welsh provides another asset, as Welsh was Burton’s first language. The play traverses Burton’s mentoring by teacher, Philip Burton, his discovery by impresario Binky Beaumont (an amusing impersonation by Mallon, who does many other characters throughout the evening), his early Hollywood years, the original Broadway production of ‘Camelot’, the fateful events with Taylor during the filming of ‘Cleopatra’ and the calamities of later years.” |
Reviewed by: Adam Somerset |
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