| “The Greatest Role that Little Richie Jenkins Got to Play” |
Richard Burton |
| Playing Burton- Welsh National Theatre , Aberystwyth Arts Centre , December 5, 2025 |
“Playing Burton” was performed in London, Cardiff, Cardigan, Bangor, Aberystwyth, Wrexham and Swansea between November 16th and 25th. It was not a tour as such; on a Saturday night at Aberystwyth Matthew Rhys travelled with just one companion from Welsh National Theatre. Props and the sound desk were provided by the host venue. The most recent books on Richard Burton have swelled to an enormous size. Tom Rubython's overblown “And God created Burton”, below 24th January 2012, and Roger Lewis' “Erotic Vagrancy” wallow in the years of excess. Michael Munn's biography of 2008, below 6th September 2009, is a leaner, cleaner read. Mark Jenkins' play does not eschew the actor's time at Hollywood's peak. He touches on the yacht that was moored in the Thames, mainly for the benefit of the pets and the immigration rules against coming on land. A memory returns of the triumph in outbidding Onassis for a diamond of monstrous price. The 1964 Broadway “Hamlet”, the subject of Jack Thorne's 2023 award-winning play, below 2nd April 2024, played for 136 performances. Burton earned a million dollars. But these are exceptions in an hour and a half's meditation on acting, family, show business, language, verse, passion, guilt and drink. Mark Jenkins spoke of his intention to Hazel Walford-Davies in 2005: “The play is about role-playing, hence the title. I didn't want this monologue to be just an impersonation of Burton. I wanted it to be an exploration of the man Richard Jenkins playing the part of Richard Burton who was, in a sense, an artificial creation.” It is a sinuous narrative which loops back and forth over time and space. The boy from Pontrhydyfen, the lover of rugby, is never far away. Mark Jenkins listed the “three interwoven modes of performance. Burton the raconteur talking about his life. Burton acting scenes from his life. Burton acting cameos from his most famous parts. So you've got three entirely different modes of delivery and the actor switches seamlessly from one to the other. It's this variety that makes the play work on stage.” Vivid plays breathe metaphor. Mark Jenkins spoke of “the thematic sub-plots that bubble up through the dialogue. There's the Doctor Faustus sub-plot with Mephistopheles waiting for the soul of Richard Jenkins. There's Prince Hal conquering the world, and King Lear who retains his greatness despite the terrible things that have happened to him.” It is a custom in Aberystwyth that performances with a single actor play in the Studio. For this inaugural performance of the Welsh National Theatre the sold-out Theatr y Werin was needed with its audience of three hundred. The play has a break of just a few minutes. When Matthew Rhys exits briefly the realisation falls as to how completely he has held the stage. It is a dozen years since the last appearance on stage. Actor and director Bartlett Sher have worked on a performance of subtlety, high vocal variation, flashes of compelling energy. The linguistic variety in the script requires voices from Wales, England and the United States. The conversation re-enacted with Dylan Thomas has a particular comic punchline to it. In the chronology of the life Philip Burton makes his decisive entry. “Everything he taught me I grew to love” says Richard Burton “to use the English language like a sword.” The upward ascent of extraordinary speed is economically told. Binkie Beaumont has early sight of a performance and offers him work at £10 a week. Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart are in Stratford and word of this young actor of charisma races to Hollywood. A showdown later with Zanuck has the mogul of film astonished that an actor should wish to be Hamlet at the Old Vic for £45 a week. Matthew Rhys becomes the afflicted man of late middle age. Crystals of alcohol have formed down the spine and require operation. After a speech of some savagery from “the Spy Who Came in from the Cold” there is consolation of seeing a London dawn from the height of a suite at the Dorchester Hotel. He muses of being in Oxford speaking to young people of literature. That might be “an end to my incessant pain”. But most of all the end of Mark Jenkins' play goes to the heart of his intent “Richard Burton was the greatest role that little Richie Jenkins got to play.” And so the Welsh National Theatre comes into being. Note: Mark Jenkins can be read in conversation, alongside fourteen other playwrights, with Hazel Walford Davies in "Now You're Talking. Contemporary Welsh Dramatists" published by Parthian Books. |
Reviewed by: Adam Somerset |
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