When Richard Burton decided to play Hamlet in 1964, he hired Sir John Gielgud to direct. Burton was 39 and at the height of his fame, boosted by his marriage to Elizabeth Taylor.
Twenty years his senior, Gielgud had been a theatrical matinee idol at 26 and his fame was diminishing.
Jack Thorne’s play is set across the 25 days of rehearsal from first read-through to opening night, with detours into Burton and Taylor’s operatic relationship and Gielgud’s forlorn quest for male companionship.
As Burton, Johnny Flynn brings a wiry physicality and Tuppence Middleton does her best with an underwritten Taylor, but the incendiary chemistry between the two is conspicuously absent.
Mark Gatiss as the venerable, vulnerable Gielgud is another thing altogether.
He captures Gielgud’s patrician flair and the cultivated air of diffidence, effectively exposing the fearful and disconsolate man beneath the Noel Coward-like carapace who excuses his tearfulness thus: “I was born with my bladder too close to my eyes.”
Sam Mendes’ reverential direction makes the conflicts and triumphs seem sedated and the remaining cast hardly registers, Allan Corduner and Janie Dee excepted.
While Flynn plays to the gallery, howling some of Hamlet’s speeches like a Welsh wolf, Gatiss seems to be acting for himself alone.
The contrast works beautifully even in the context of this insubstantial play.
- The Motive and the Cue, National Theatre until July 15 Tickets: 020 7452 3961
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