Mark Gatiss takes his cue from Gielgud

All of my prejudices have, however, been pleasantly confounded: Gatiss captures Gielgud magnificently. He has all of his mannerisms – the occasional slight quizzical tilt of the head, the arched eyebrow and the gently lilting voice down to a tee, but what makes the performance exceptional is that he has captured, too, the actor’s vulnerability.

The play looks at how Richard Burton, the classical actor-turned-film star, decided he needed to show once more what he could do on the stage, and, in 1964, got John Gielgud to direct him in a production of Hamlet. It turned out to be a fraught, sometimes bloody, but ultimately rewarding association between two contrasting characters who represented, on the one hand, theatrical tradition, good manners and a slightly prissy reserve, and, on the other, compromised, rumbustious and debauched stardom.

Johnny Flynn inevitably has more trouble convincing as Burton, but then again that man’s charisma was never going to be easily replicated. Tuppence Middleton struggles for the same reason as Burton’s then wife Elizabeth Taylor, but she nevertheless has some poignant scenes with Gielgud where they achieve an easy rapport. There’s an amusingly scene-stealing turn along the way from Allan Corduner as Hume Cronyn, the actor who was once married to Jessica Tandy.

Ultimately it is Thorne’s writing and Sam Mendes’s brisk direction that holds this big, unwieldy and hugely ambitious two hours and 40 minutes production together. I found it oddly moving at the end, but then I reflected I was maybe just sad that my parents’ generation got to see the real Gielgud, Burton and Taylor strutting their stuff, whereas mine only gets to see actors playing them.