Sam Mendes directs Mark Gatiss as Gielgud and Johnny Flynn as Burton

I WENT to the Noël Coward Theatre to catch a performance of The Motive and the Cue after it transferred from the National Theatre late last year.

The play, penned by Skins writer Jack Thorne, dramatises a 1964 production of Hamlet that went on to become one of the most popular runs in the history of the play. The action begins when a young Richard Burton – a rising star who has recently married the Hollywood legend Elizabeth Taylor – teams up with an aging John Gielgud, the classical Shakespearean actor-turned-director, whose star appears to be on the wane.

Things get off to a terrible start. Burton is frustrated by Gielgud’s direction, which is vague and contradictory.

He longs for clear direction but rejects it whenever Gielgud obliges. Burton is the vision of a vain and tortured artist. He suffers under the weight of all the Hamlets who have come before, including Gielgud’s, fearing that his own can never measure up.

Tuppence Middleton as Taylor, in Jack Thorne’s play that offers ‘a glimpse into the politics of a rehearsal room and the relationship between art and celebrity’ [Mark Douet]

Burton – who loved his own father, we learn, but did not respect him – cannot connect with the Danish prince he is supposed to play.

He does understand who “his” Hamlet is.

Things only click into place when Gielgud suggests to Burton that perhaps Hamlet did not respect his father after all. This is the interpretive key Burton needs to unlock “his” Hamlet, a young prince torn between the pressure to publicly uphold his father’s honour while nursing a private contempt for the man.

The play asks questions about the role of biography in art, and ego, and offers a moving portrayal of fatherhood and of teaching. It is well worth a watch if you find yourself with a spare evening in this strange stretch of time between winter and spring.