Sam Mendes commissioned Jack Thorne to write a play about John Gielgud directing Richard Burton in Hamlet on Broadway in 1964.
Thorne took his inspiration from two books by actors who had been in the company: William Redfield’s Letters from an Actor and Richard L Sterne’s John Gielgud Directs Richard Burton in Hamlet. Sterne had secretly taped all rehearsals.
Richard Burton and Peter O’Toole were filming Becket when they decided they wanted to play Hamlet directed by either John Gielgud or Laurence Olivier. They tossed a coin. Olivier directed Peter O’Toole at the Old Vic in London in 1963. Gielgud directed Burton on Broadway in 1964. It went on to be the longest running Hamlet New York had seen, 137 performances, a hugely popular rather than a critical success.
Burton didn’t want to wear tights. The production would be modern. The actors would not wear costume. They would be performing, as it were, the final run-through in their normal rehearsal clothes. The stage was bleak and unattractive with its bare walls, platforms and minimum furniture.
John Gielgud was the most famous classical actor of his age, noted for his beautiful voice; supreme interpreter of Shakespeare; the definitive Hamlet, a role he had played four times and directed. Burton had also acted Hamlet at the Old Vic in 1953 with great success.
A clash between director and actor, between classist and modern, both insecure, was inevitable. ‘I should never have attempted to direct another actor in a part I knew so well,’ said Gielgud, who didn’t need the text. He knew the whole play by heart. It would have been better if they had both come to the play absolutely fresh.
Gielgud was 60. Burton was 39. Gielgud’s career had been in decline since the arrival of the angry young men and the kitchen sink. Burton’s career was on the rise. Audiences came to see the biggest Hollywood star who had just married Elizabeth Taylor.
Burton, alcoholic, chain-smoker, a great actor who wasted his talent, died at 58. Gielgud, would go on to reinvent himself for a modern theatre age and would live on until he was 96.
Mark Gattis is Gielgud, his knowledge and wit nicely understated. Johnny Flynn is Burton. He has a big scene in his underpants, shouting away, drunk, unprofessional and confronting Gielgud in the rudest manner.
A witty touch of Mendes’s production is to have a recording of Noël Coward singing Why Must the Show Go On?
The Motive and the Cue will have a special appeal for members of the theatrical profession and audiences who know a bit about Gielgud, Burton and Hamlet.
To learn more about Robert Tanitch and his reviews, click here to go to his website. 
