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Johnny Flynn: ‘I fall asleep to Richard Burton reading me ”Under Milk Wood”’.
Jack Thorne’s new drama is the sort of play that gets described by the timelessly wanky epithet ‘a love letter to theatre’.
Don’t let that put you off: you can rarely go wrong with a production directed by Sam frickin’ Mendes, and if it’s essentially MOR as hell, ‘The Motive and the Cue’ finds its feet via three excellent lead performances.
It is 1964, and Richard Burton (Johnny Flynn) is probably the second-most famous actor in the world – the most famous being his wife, Elizabeth Taylor (Tuppence Middleton). Unlike her, the blunt, boozy Welshman is a creature of the stage. After achieving global celebrity through a prolific but ‘mixed’ body of film work, he’s determined to show the world what he’s really made of. He’s going to do ‘Hamlet’ on Broadway.
Or that’s the plan. What Burton’s doing is arguing with the legendary theatre knight Sir John Gielgud (Mark Gatiss), who is notionally directing him in a high-concept production of Shakespeare’s greatest play.
Flynn has done a remarkable job of nailing Burton’s rough-hewn but mellifluous South Wales accent
Like Burton, Thorne and Mendes started out in theatre and have now largely moved into screen work. And at first ‘The Motive and the Cue’ feels like a loving tribute to the rehearsal process from a writer and director who are now largely looking back at it nostalgically. Even the liberal doses of ‘Hamlet’ peppered throughout feel rooted in a certain wistfulness. Its slick docudrama beginnings are interesting, but not riveting.
What brings it to life is its cast. Flynn has done a remarkable job of nailing Burton’s rough-hewn but mellifluous South Wales accent. His formidable array of rollnecks help, but the work he’s done with dialect coach Charmian Hoare feels like a true channelling, electrifying even the most mundane scenes.
In a smaller part, Middleton is scene-stealing as Taylor, both radiant and dangerous. She’s like a tiger that’s content to be caged for now – staying to avoid the paparazzi, she visibly terrifies Burton’s American castmates with her wild charisma and crackling halo of fame. When she flirts with mortal men – as she regularly does – they look like they’re about to have a panic attack.
But unexpectedly, this turns out to be Gatiss’s play. At first, it seems like Gielgud is there to be a comic foil, a light figure, amusingly frustrating Burton and the ‘Hamlet’ cast with his breezy standoffishness. They all want the great stage knight to take them in hand and impart rare acting wisdom. He simply compliments their line reads then makes polite suggestions that infer he thought the line read was terrible. Eventually, it gets too much for Burton, and they clash – unable to find his Hamlet, the star ups his already formidable booze consumption, turning up sloshed and bellicose to rehearsals, belittling Gielgud’s career.
And Gielgud is upset. Gatiss’s Sir John goes from amusing character sketch to a poignant study in genius and ageing, a man who was a superstar in his twenties now facing up to old age, irrelevance and the loneliness of being a queer older man in an unaccepting era. As a member of the legendary sketch troupe The League of Gentlemen, Gatiss was always brilliant at mining poignancy from superficially ludicrous characters; in some ways his Gielgud feels like the logical conclusion of that process.
It’s entertaining, with a rousing finale, but I wish ‘The Motive and the Cue’ had more of the grit and weirdness of ‘Hamlet’, not just borrowed its poetry. The third act of Thorne’s play is a fairly pat bit of triumph over adversity. ‘The Motive and the Cue’ may be a love letter to theatre, but in the end it feels a little too Hollywood.