| Jack Thorne Burton-Gielgud Drama Wins Olivier Award |
Richard Burton |
| The Motive and the Cue , Royal National Theatre , April 2, 2024 |
“The Motive and the Cue” is a joyous experience. Rhodri Lewis in his vast study of Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor “Erotic Vagrancy” points out some erroneous dialogue. Since John Gielgud and Richard Burton went back to the 1940s some of the explicatory dialogue was redundant. Elizabeth Taylor is a star presence on the film screen. She cannot be reproduced by an actor, in the same way that Brando or Bogart would elude any portrayers. But what Jack Thorne's drama does have, in the hands of director Sam Mendes, is a compelling central tension in the two star actors. n, Mark Gatiss' depiction of Gielgud is extraordinary, his Olivier award a natural consequence and deserved tribute. The company for the production of “Hamlet” in 1964, the subject of the play, included Hume Cronyn as Polonius. Jack Thorne gives him some lines about actors: “I believe you will not meet a more tough-gutted and realistic group in the world. The theatre's guarantee of employment is nil, the theatre's competition is savage, the theatre's employees are reckless gamblers. Actors know that if the play fails Armageddon will be upon them- but they will survive. Show me a working actor and I will show you a man- or woman- with a concrete stomach.” “The Motive and the Cue” was brought into being by Sam Mendes reading Richard L. Sterne’s “John Gielgud Directs Richard Burton” and William Redfield’s “Letters from an Actor.” * * * * From the critical reception Nick Curtis for the Evening Standard. “In this enjoyable, hugely adroit but distinctly “theatrical” extravaganza, writer Jack Thorne uses Richard Burton’s hit Hamlet on Broadway in 1964 to explore the art of acting and the trap of fame. This is a play that thrives on the knowing exploitation of showbiz mythology. But also on the fizz and crackle of opposites: film vs theatre, modernism vs classicism; passion vs dedication. iery, working-class Burton is hitting the bed and the booze hard with his sizzling new film star wife Liz Taylor. His director for Hamlet is Sir John Gielgud: theatrical royalty, diffidently homosexual, trading on past glories. “A new breed of celebrity photographer is thronging the hotel where Burton keeps Taylor like an imprisoned princess, fearful she might “threaten tumescence” among the cast if she visited rehearsals. All three main characters are jealous of each other, but it’s the dynamic between the two men – both famous Hamlets, and sons of disappointing fathers – that dominates. “...In Jack Thorne’s dramatisation of the pair’s encounter, Mark Gatiss plays Gielgud, whose star is fading, and Johnny Flynn plays Burton, whose star wattage has shot off the scale after his recent marriage to Elizabeth Taylor (Tuppence Middleton). It is Taylor who speaks of the potential for fireworks in this prickly partnership between a “classicist wanting to be modern, and a modern wanting to be a classicist”. “Those fireworks take some time to explode in Sam Mendes’s attractive but slightly anaemic production, which splices ego-bound battles between the men with scenes from Hamlet, some of which are evocatively staged. But the proxy father-son psychodrama between the two remains undercharged for too long and is then resolved too neatly. “Burton and Taylor’s relationship does not set the stage alight either. Middleton plays the part too lightly, rather like a turn in a TV sitcom, emanating none of the smouldering charisma of her real-life counterpart. Flynn does an energetic impression of Burton, hitting all the Welsh inflections and tonality of his speech patterns, but it remains an impersonation. “Where the play comes alive is in Gielgud’s story and Gatiss’s performance. He sounds like Gielgud but captures something beyond imitation: the pained spirit of a great actor grappling with the ageing process – the old guard, reluctantly, giving way to the new. Gielgud admits to his envy of Burton and shows his insecurity as a director. We see the fear his homosexuality brings in an era when it was criminalised; a hotel room conversation with a sex worker carries great, subtle power. “...But even with its cinematic elements, this is a rather self-regarding homage to theatre. “Together we share the responsibility of what theatre can be,” says Burton. “Theatre is thinking,” says Gielgud, and these observations sound close to mawkish cliches on the mythology and magic of the stage. “There is a real sense of remove too as we watch actors playing actors who, in turn, are playing characters in Hamlet, or unpicking the meanings of the play, scene by scene. Ultimately, this play-about-the-play leaves us wishing we had been there to see Burton in the real thing.” * * * * Dominic Cavendish for the Telegraph “A play delving behind the scenes of the 1964 Hamlet that starred Richard Burton, under the direction of John Gielgud? It sounds at once like a safe bet – because these are names to conjure with - and a high risk. That Hamlet was a record-breaking hot-ticket on Broadway back in the day. “What with Jack Thorne scripting and Sam Mendes directing, The Motive and the Cue has caused a stampede at the National’s box-office too, assisted by beguiling casting: Mark Gatiss and Johnny Flynn as the two acting titans. “Even so, the suspicion lingered that the pair's innate appeal - with Tuppence Middleton playing Elizabeth Taylor, Burton’s then newly wed wife, adding tantalisation – could only woo our interest. Once won, might we be in for something weary, stale, flat and unprofitable? This reconstructive drama concludes on the ‘opening night’; it’s not so much the play or the circus of attention around it, as the rehearsal process that’s the thing. “It’s a pleasure to report that the evening is a palpable hit. This is a witty, deft, touching evocation of a fascinating, fraught encounter that captures the mood of those times, the character of those men. Compressing events, Thorne weaves fact with judicious fiction, taking notable liberties including a sweary confrontation. But what he achieves is the truth, or what feels like it – a portrait of two artists at very different points of their illustrious careers. “Gatiss is to the manner born as the quietly pained old knight. Gielgud is at the awkward age of 60, his gilded heyday, and own triumphs in the role, a memory; he’s in a no man’s land as the new generation rise up and cast the old guard aside. A gangly figure, his chin back, as if always aiming his words to the gallery, Gatiss’s Sir John mixes regal poise with a bashful air of repression. “...But, ay, there’s the rub. The beauty of the evening is that it shows the mysteries of the rehearsal room, how different chemistries can mix badly but also the alchemy of revelation. Flynn doesn’t give us the full rugged incarnation of Burton but his gathering doubt and irritation feels authentic – and in struggling, sardonically and even viciously against his mentor, he unlocks, with him, the filial complexes from his life that can feed the art.” With thanks and acknowledgment for the full review which can be read at the Daily Telegraph. |
Reviewed by: Adam Somerset |
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