Burton and Gielgud square off in The Motive and the Cue

What’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,/That he should weep for her?/ What would he do/Had he the motive and the cue for passion/That I have?

Hamlet II.2

Jack Thorne’s new play,The Motive and the Cue, takes its title from Hamlet’s amazed reaction to the power actors can bring to feelings that are artificial, merely imagined, “in a fiction, in a dream of passion,” as Hamlet says. What might they do had they what he calls “the motive and the cue” engendered by real suffering?

The play reimagines the rehearsal process for a production of Hamlet, where we’re witnesses to multiple layers of imagination and artifice. Two contemporary actors—Mark Gatiss and Johnny Flynn—portray two legendary actors—John Gielgud and Richard Burton—as they clash over how to portray Hamlet, himself a character notoriously committed to artifice and pretense. 

For all Hamlet’s astonishment that the players can mimic deep emotion so effectively, he also understands that pretense may reveal the truth—which is why he instructs the players to present a specific play to the king in hopes of provoking an emotional reaction that will prove his guilt.

It’s why we continue to go to the theater—presumably not to reveal ourselves as murderers like Claudius, but to experience the deep emotional reaction that actors provoke in us. 

And Gatiss and Flynn are two actors at the top of their game. Add Tuppence Middleton as Elizabeth Taylor holed up in a luxurious hotel suite while her new husband rehearses, and we have a splendid trio of performances.

It’s 1964. Richard Burton, newly married to Elizabeth Taylor and at the height of his fame, has agreed to play Hamlet on Broadway. And John Gielgud, a legendary Hamlet of the 1930s, has agreed to direct the play.

The swashbuckling Burton and the restrained Gielgud are not a good match, but their incompatibility makes for riveting theater.

Gatiss is immensely moving as Gielgud, aware that he is past his prime and aware, too, that even during his prime his own elegant and lyric voice was often overshadowed by that of the more charismatic Laurence Olivier. And now he is trying to direct a newer version of Olivier, the glamorous and charismatic Burton.

Flynn, as Burton, begins rehearsals by overacting brilliantly. Is he just attempting to find his own Hamlet? Or is Burton throwing down a gauntlet to the old-fashioned Gielgud, staking his claim to a modern Hamlet?

Gielgud tries to rein him in, perhaps in the same way he would have tried to direct his rival, Olivier. “You shout wonderfully,” he purrs. “Both you and Larry do—two splendid cornets …”

But Gielgud is perceptive enough to observe not just that an actor is trapped with the character he plays—the impulsive Burton must learn how to restrain himself sufficiently to play Hamlet, a man unable to act on impulse—but also that the character is trapped with the actor. Burton’s Hamlet must somehow belong to the impetuous Burton; it cannot be an imitation of Gielgud’s more refined prince. 

Gielgud and Burton eventually open up to each other—a surprisingly perceptive and emotionally intelligent Elizabeth Taylor plays a part in this—and as they each lay bare their own vulnerabilities, we see how the feeling that actors present on stage, Hamlet’s “dream of passion,” is grounded in the very real experiences and feelings of actor and director.

The end is thrilling. As we suddenly find ourselves backstage at the opening, we see that Flynn’s Burton has indeed become Hamlet: he has found both the motive and the cue for passion that will transport his audience, as it does us.

NB This production has been filmed and will be released at US theaters showing NT Live productions in March 2024.