Play review: ‘The Motive and the Cue’, Noel Coward Theatre, London

The Motive and the Cue, a new play by Jack Thorne, directed by Sam Mendes, which premiered in London last year, documents the rehearsal process of the 1964 Broadway production of Hamlet, starring Richard Burton as Hamlet and directed by Sir John Gielgud. The parts were played by the original National Theatre cast including Johnny Flynn as Burton, Mark Gatiss as Gielgud and Tuppence Middleton as Elizabeth Taylor. Burton and Taylor married for the first time in 1964, and much of the action is set in their hotel suite, where Taylor entertains the cast with and without Burton, as well as alternately placating him and plying him with booze. 

Gielgud and Burton had worked together previously, and both were experienced in their respective roles. Burton had worked on many stage productions- some of which were more successful than his ventures into film. Gielgud, a successful actor since his late teens, first on stage and then on screen, had moved into directing by the 1960s. This had given him significant success; he won the Best Director Tony for Big Fish, Little Fish on Broadway in 1961. Despite this, the rehearsal process for Hamlet was fractious and the two stars’ often thorny relationship is at the heart of The Motive and the Cue.

In the play, Burton is portrayed as chaotic, often drunk, unable to learn lines, rude to the other members of the cast- including ‘Gertrude’, played by Eileen Herlie, a Scottish/American stage actor who had notable experience in previous productions of Hamlet, including as Gertrude in Olivier’s film version- and over-sensitive to critique from Gielgud. He is especially keen to avoid being given ‘a line reading’, and often reacts with ferocity if he suspects that this is the aim of Gielgud’s attempts at direction. Gielgud is portrayed as pedantic, repressed, and alternates between treating Burton with kid gloves and letting him have it with both barrels. Gielgud knows it all, and knows it a bit too much. Burton’s desperation to know ‘it’ stops him from absorbing the lessons he could learn. Taylor mediates and cajoles, but is separate from the rehearsal action and seems sidelined and bored.

It takes a tumultuous scene where Gielgud bullies and batters Burton through Act 3, scene 2’s ‘Speak the speech, I pray you’, and some reflections about both men’s fathers, before Burton is inspired to see the light, and we learn through a projection onto the set that the production’s run was a record-breaking success, exceeding the previous record for a run of Hamlet on Broadway- ironically set by a 1936 production starring Gielgud.

The play is tonally mixed. Some of the rehearsal scenes with the other Hamlet actors feel overlong; they add context to the overall chaotic atmosphere of the rehearsal process, and emphasise Burton’s lack of familiarity with the play, but they sometimes drag, and we don’t care enough about the characters to worry about the impact of a Broadway failure on their reputations. The scenes between Burton and Taylor are understandably lacking the pair’s famous fire at a time when their relationship was new and ostensibly happy, but they also lack passion and chemistry. Middleton’s performance occasionally strayed from languid to deliberate, and it was hard to tell whether it was just Taylor who was a little bit bored. In contrast, the scenes between Gielgud and Burton move at pace, and crackle, with Gatiss providing much-needed shade to Flynn’s almost-OTT Burton. I would have been interested to see this same story performed as a two-hander. However, I am biased, because I always prefer a shorter play with a smaller cast. I suspect the temptation to include Taylor as a character was too hard to ignore, and the focus of the whole rehearsal room on Burton gradually ratchets up the pressure cooker in a way that might have been hard to achieve otherwise. Without other characters, we would have also missed Gielgud’s encounter with a male prostitute, a scene that gives his character added dimension and adds a further contrast to Burton, whose prominent heterosexual masculinity is emphasised throughout.

Flynn has a hard job to do in portraying Burton, often seen as a caricature of himself, without resorting to a comic impression which would seem all drunken Voice and no nuance. He mainly succeeds, particularly towards the end of the play, but I was relieved that he seemed to tone down from a ‘big’ opening, which established the character quickly, but felt overdone. Gatiss, in contrast, seems eminently suited to Gielgud’s diffidence. In an all-star year for Best Actor (Joseph Fiennes, James Norton, Andrew Scott, and David Tennant were the other nominees), his Olivier Award is surely a deserving recognition of a performance which is both intelligent and moving.

The play itself is full of in-jokes about theatre and uses a black canvas downstage to cover set changes and move the action along. Each projected quote from Hamlet relates to the forthcoming onstage action and each new day’s rehearsal is signalled by a reference to the play. Shakespeare lovers and theatre buffs are a step ahead here, and it’s possible that anyone without this knowledge may have found these to have a feeling of ‘in jokes’, and therefore a little smug. A personal view is that I don’t enjoy any device which is clearly added just to cover the changes in set. Just let us see the changes happen or, even better, have a set that doesn’t need them. This is particularly relevant to Shakespeare and Shakespeare-adjacent works: the original Globe stage would not have featured much scenery and let’s not forget that this is the writer who signals a whole change of location by having a character announce to the audience ‘Well, this is the Forest of Arden’ (Rosalind, in Act 2, scene 4 of As You Like It). A theatre audience knows they are in the theatre; they are already suspending their disbelief. In this case, the contrast between the two main sets heightened the different atmosphere between the business of the rehearsal room and the hotel as a place for the same group to socialise and unwind- the dark pink plushness of the latter emphasising this as Taylor’s domain in a stereotypical nod to femininity. It is hard to see how the same effect could not have been achieved with lighting, though, and the fact that Taylor never leaves the hotel is a signifier of where we are: if she’s there, it isn’t a rehearsal.

In spite of these minor criticisms, I came out of The Motive and the Cue interested and impressed. It made me laugh and it made me sad. It also made me google the real production on the way home: any play that makes you research is a good one, in my book.

Burton and Gielgud in rehearsals for the original production, and as portrayed by Gatiss and Flynn.