Worth: $18.00
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Cast:
Johnny Flynn, Mark Gatiss. Tuppence Middleton
Intro:
Hamlet is inexhaustible, and to lovers of ‘the finest play by the finest playwright’, this is a complex treat.
According to an end caption from this recent NT Live show, an estimated 500,000 actors have played Hamlet. The play itself has been at the pinnacle of the western canon for over five hundred years, which ain’t too shabby. It is also a monstrously long and complex piece of theatre which, as the National Theatre blurb points out, holds no surprises plot-wise. Everyone dies in the end. Also, having your mum sleep with your uncle can send you mad.
So, why would an actor like Richard Burton, who in the 1960s was one of the biggest film stars around, go back to the stage and risk making a very ordinary attempt at the role? Part of the answer was that the great John Gielgud was going to direct. Here was the promise of a clash of egos, with their huge differences in method and approach possibly sparking an unforgettable collaboration and performance.
This is the element that intrigues contemporary playwright Jack Thorne, who has penned this new play, The Motive and Cue about the rehearsal for their version of the play. It is directed on the London stage by Sam Mendes.
It is the cast that has had everyone buzzing, and they are indeed all exceptional. Johnny Flynn plays Burton as a complex man with great talent and an equally large ability to go off the rails and waste his gifts. Burton was, of course, married (more than once) to Elizabeth Taylor and she is in this production too, supporting her errant but brilliant husband and brokering a peace between him and “Sir John”. Tuppence Middleton does a good turn playing Taylor as smart and witty (and highly sexed). She is determined to make her role count, when most of the attention is on the two sparring male leads.
Flynn shows his great range, but the pinnacle of the performances is Mark Gatiss as Gielgud. It is a perfect – almost uncanny – impersonation vocally, and in terms of Gielgud’s mannerisms. However, there is more than impersonation here. There is so much pathos in Gatiss’s realisation of the aging theatrical giant, who feels that he did his best work in his twenties and who has spent a long tail off seeing his careful diction and highly literary style become partly obsolete. When Burton mocks his highbrow almost camp style, we see how charged their relationship can become.
So, how does this work as a play and as an entertainment? It is fair to say that it will appeal to lovers of the theatre primarily and, at two hours and 40 minutes, it requires the same sustained concentration as the great play it is riffing on. As implied, it is a play within a play where we also get long passages of Hamlet’s text (yes, the great soliloquies) and lots of very in-depth and sophisticated analysis of how the play works and how to bring the text to life. To find his unique take on the Prince, Gielgud tells Burton he must go much deeper, both into himself and the character. What is the deeper motive and from what does he takes his cue?
The set here is more or less just a rehearsal room and there are no great explosive moments visually.
The filming of these National Theatre plays has moved from the previous static camera days (we now get some much-needed close ups), but the effect is still mostly one of sitting in the stalls in a theatre.
This will be seen as a limitation to some. Most of the people who go to this series know that they are essentially going to watch a film of a theatre performance.
Also, Hamlet is inexhaustible, and to lovers of ‘the finest play by the finest playwright’, this is a complex treat. It is full of all the craft, wit and intelligence one would hope for from this theatre company.
