The Motive and the Cue review | A love letter to theatre

Burton, a fiery, working-class hero, is indulging in sex and alcohol with his stunning new film star wife Liz Taylor. His director for Hamlet is Sir John Gielgud: theatrical aristocracy, discreetly homosexual, living on past achievements. A new generation of celebrity photographers is crowding the hotel where Burton keeps Taylor as a captive queen, afraid she might “provoke arousal” among the cast if she attended rehearsals. All three main characters are envious of each other, but it’s the relationship between the two men – both renowned Hamlets, and sons of disappointing fathers – that prevails.

Adding more layers, we have Thorne (Skins, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child), superstar director Sam Mendes (Lehman Trilogy, Skyfall), and Johnny Flynn, Mark Gatiss and Tuppence Middleton in the main roles, each bringing a different mix of stage-and-screen fame to the table. Those who catch all the references and jokes and know Hamlet inside out – hardcore theatre geeks like me – will probably adore it. Others may find it too arrogant and self-referential. It’s gracefully composed and performed. Flynn and Gatiss successfully emulate Burton’s rough, grumbling speech and Gielgud’s soaring musicality without resorting to outright imitation. Physically, the former is ambitious, cocky, aggressive, prowling the stage with a restless energy, looking for a challenge.

The latter is priestly and reserved, using his sharp humour like a sword. There are some brilliant lines. “You shout wonderfully,” Gielgud tells Burton, adding a snide comparison to his rival, Laurence Olivier. Oh God, now I’m doing the arrogant, I-get-the-joke thing… Middleton impresses even though this Liz T is a vague collection of curves, quips and explanations. But again, Thorne smartly plays both sides. While the boys rant about art and truth it’s the flat sex symbol who really understands herself and her role in the entertainment world. Es Devlin’s set, too, is smart, sliding panels opening and closing to show the bare rehearsal room, or the pink suite through which Middleton’s Taylor sneaks like a sexually-frustrated leopard. To balance the Burton-Taylor hormone-fest, Thorne writes a gentle, restrained scene between Gielgud and a male escort – a further expression of the dualism within Shakespeare’s play.

Almost all theatre-makers prefer the process of creation to the final product. Gielgud’s “rehearsal staging” of Hamlet (played as if it’s at the final rehearsal, in modern dress) and The Motive and the Cue both try to capture the heady exploration and conflict that occurs before an artwork is “finished”. Thorne’s play does so very well but I doubt most people – especially those outside the hardcore geek demographic, those that theatres surely want to attract – are more interested in product than process.