THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
In 1964 Richard Burton played Hamlet on Broadway in an 'experimental' production directed by Sir John Gielgud which became a sensational hit and part of theater lore. Movie star Burton, then at his height, was happily ensconced in his first marriage to Elizabeth Taylor, an even bigger star, and the couple were swimming in a pool of worldwide adulation, the most photographed people on the planet. Paparazzi imprisoned them wherever they set foot and even camped outside the rehearsal room, much to the annoyance, but also envy, of the 'serious' theater folk.
Sam Mendes' Neal Street Productions commissioned this play from Jack Thorne, currently our most lauded and award-laden writer for both stage and screen. The result, directed by Mendes is a gloriously polished jewel of a play which explores the politics of the rehearsal room, the troubled conjunction of celebrity and art and the eternal, unanswerable question – what is Hamlet really about? If you love theater, real movie stars, and know your Hamlet backwards, this is a luxurious wallow.
While Burton was on a career peak and could choose projects and fire associates at will, Gielgud, who had just turned 60, was feeling washed up. He took the job as it was the only exciting thing on offer even though he had severe misgivings about Burton's suitability for the role of the depressed Dane. Early on he tells Burton that if he saw the ghost of his father who implored him to kill his stepfather he'd do it in a shot. And, of course, the spine of the play is Burton's inability to get a handle on the role, having to fall back on his beautiful voice and the declamatory acting style of the period which he hated.
Gielgud's concept, a bit outré for Broadway, was to stage it without a set and with actors in their own clothes as if doing the final 'run though' in a rehearsal room. It worked, but of course this threw even more spotlight onto the verse speaking and on Gielgud's ideas about theater being "about thinking".
While the writing and the direction couldn't be bettered, what makes the piece fly are the performances of Mark Gatiss and Johnny Flynn. Flynn gets Burton's voice down perfectly but doesn't let it hobble him. He also combines matinée idol charisma with a raffish rockstar chic, perfect for Burton.
Gatiss is even more triumphant as he slowly but deftly reveals what lay beneath that hard shell which Gielgud had so carefully constructed. That fluting voice, that donnish concern with precision of language, that gentle but knowing wit, the whole absent-minded vicar schtick, pointed to a pained defensiveness of an often-wounded soul. In an almost unbearably poignant scene, a hotel room rendezvous with a swarthy sex worker, he is devastated by the unexpected intuition and gentleness of the young man. Later, a drunken Burton cruelly deploys sly homophobic taunts to humiliate him in front of the whole company and the effect is even more shattering. Burton later apologized abjectly.
Following the taunt, Gielgud clears the room and in a beautifully constructed finale to Act One, alone and devastated he speaks Hamlet's 'Advice to the Players' speech drawing out how it perfectly encapsulates both his emotional state and his whole aesthetic.
Tuppence Middleton is the third pillar of this great production and gives us a Taylor whose soulful earthiness is set off by a keen intelligence and a sardonic wit, which aids her role as peacemaker.
Es Devlin's dramatic designs provide both scale and intimacy at once. Black screens form like the shutters of a camera lens allowing scene changes, and intertitles display some well-chosen Shakespearean quotes which serve as chapter headings. The Burtons' lavish hotel suite has the shocking scarlet of a bordello, while Gielgud's humbler one has the icy blueness of a nun's cell.
The play obviously has to mine the psychology of Hamlet and Thorne ingeniously interweaves that whole discourse with the backstory of both men and their relationships with their respective fathers, concluding that perhaps Hamlet is ambivalent about his father for good reason. This neatly brings us to how Burton tackles "To be or not to be" and so unlocks the character.
It's a joy to see new stage writing where the writer knows what an ending is.
