| “A Stunning Richard Burton. Matthew Rhys is Sensational” |
Welsh National Theatre |
| London Critic at Welsh National Theatre , Old Vic Theatre London , December 3, 2025 |
The planning for the centenary of the birth of Richard Burton, 10th November 2025, was long in the making. The plaques were decided on, the Minister for Culture was set to be in Céligny. The talks were primed, the television documentary and films scheduled. And at a late date, in the autumn, the fledgling Welsh National Theatre joined in. The combination of actor and director in Matthew Rhys and Bartlett Sher was something of a coup of brilliance. Mark Jenkins' script “Playing Burton” is well-known, with much craft in it. A production took place in Salford with Sean Cernow in the title role. The British Theatre Guide noted “Burton regards fame as a Faustian pact...Mark Jenkins’s script is dense and demanding.” The Welsh National Theatre production played in London for a few performances. There are not many theatre critics now left who span the gifts required, literary skill allied to insight and depth of theatre knowledge. Dominic Maxwell belongs to that group of a few. He was the sole big-hitter critic to leave a record of the new Welsh National Theatre at work. The heading was “A stunning Richard Burton. Matthew Rhys is sensational in a one-man show about the Welsh actor.” From the review: “...the passion and panache of his turn in “Playing Burton” comes as a sensational surprise. Assured, compulsive, casual, commanding, Rhys nails the contrary spirit of a man who both celebrated and questioned his titanic gifts. “You assume these one-man life-shows can only be so good- even one that, in the case of Mark Jenkins' monologue, has been seen around the world since appearing at the Edinburgh Fringe in 1993. And Rhys, good though he is in his TV work...hasn't been in a play since “Look Back in Anger” in his adoptive home of New York in 2012. “What's more, this is a brief fund-raising trek for Michael Sheen's fledgling Welsh National Theatre...I expected to have to cut Bartlett Sher's production some slack for being a charity enterprise. “Zero slack required. Right from the off, as Rhys' Burton strides on-stage in suit-no-tie to interrupt a 1984 report of his own death, aged 58, he's in playful command of his character, his audience. “I will not go gentle into that good night”, Burton barks, seizing his own narrative by misquoting Dylan Thomas, whom he will later impersonate, well, alongside John Gielgud, Winston Churchill and Elizabeth Taylor. “...Competing thoughts and moods slalom in and out of each other as he questions how Richard Jenkins, the 12th of 13 children of an alcoholic miner, could become the world-conquering, womanising actor and committed drinker known as Richard Burton. “...He captures Burton's contrary spirit perfectly, though. He tells us about growing up with Welsh as his first language- true for Rhys too- and having his life turned around by Philip Burton, the teacher whose name he takes after he remoulds him for Oxford University, the stage, the world. “...What's so different and so compelling is the simultaneously suave and heartfelt way this Burton owns up to his proclivities even as he questions the way inclination dances with fate. “...This Burton doesn't doubt his gifts- indeed he berates those who doubt them in grudging obituaries he reads before dropping to the floor. He tells funny-sad stories about showbiz life, about his family. Swaying, Rhys plays Burton the functioning alcoholic, the health hazard, the great raconteur, the terrible husband. “...It's no hard-luck story, for all its sadness. And yet Rhys invests this man with such speed of thought and such complexity that a tribute show becomes a kind of one-man “Hamlet”. To be Richard Burton or not to be. It's stunning.” Abridged, with thanks and acknowledgement, from the full review which can be read by subscription at: https://www.thetimes.com/culture/theatre-dance/article/playing-burton-matthew-rhys-richard-burton-review |
Reviewed by: Adam Somerset |
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