Supper and theatre: The Motive and the Cue

Just before going to the theatre near Leicester Square, I went for hand-pulled noodles and mapo tofu at Lanzhou Noodle Bar. There was so much food I asked them to make me a doggy bag. I then had a blazing row with my sister on the way to the play. She disappeared from the seat next to me just as the play was beginning. We were about to go away for Christmas together to Suffolk. This didn’t bode well.

The Motive and the Cue is a Sam Mendes directed play about the actors Richard Burton, his wife Liz Taylor and Sir John Gielgud. Gielgud, who played a notable Prince Hamlet when he was 25, directs Richard Burton in the same role.

In the first half, Burton is a bit of a dick. He roars through the lines, imbuing them with a kind of classical camp. He shouts and barks and sweats. The lines make no sense, the emphasis on certain words is bizarre; he doesn’t mean it and you don’t believe him. It reminded me of the equally sweaty Olivier (who wasn’t even sexy like Burton) and all the famous Shakespearean actors from when I was young and studying the bard at school. It bored me.

But my sister, who is an actor, and had been watching from elsewhere in the theatre, pointed out that a classical Shakespearean actor is like a trained elite Olympian athlete. The physical energy, the stamina and discipline– it’s not a skill that is taught today.

I prefer the more naturalistic route; how say, Kenneth Branagh recites Shakespeare. I fell asleep a couple of times and I was desperate for subtitles. It didn’t help that the man three rows ahead had a combover that had become electric. I watched the entire play through twin towers of a static gauze of hair.

Johnny Flynn (I think I saw him at a Primrose Hill designer flea market the Saturday before) as Burton was very good but didn’t have that Welsh coal-face rumble to his voice that vibrates in your groin chakra. As Karen Carpenter once said when referring to her own contralto:’the money is in the basement’.

The high point is the performance by Mark Gatiss as Gielgud. Gielgud in the play is no longer a leading actor, more of a character actor who took the job of directing Burton in Hamlet as he wasn’t being offered much other work. It’s a humbling situation for him. There is a touching scene with a young male prostitute.

Gielgud complains to Elizabeth Taylor with a line something like: ‘It’s terrible when your peak was at 25’. She cracks back: ‘Try 12’. Tuppence Middleton looks good in a white silk nightgown and diamonds but doesn’t quite capture the Taylor sex appeal, all bosom and flashing eyes.

So sumptuous was the set by Es Devlin for Burton and Taylor’s hotel room, it made me want to go home and paint my walls a deep ombre pink.

One other point, while I absolutely love the drama of the coronation theme tune, Zadok the Priest, but I felt it was a bit of a cliché used at the end here.

In the interval I talked to the people behind me and a man who ate a nut roast sandwich on the other side of me. The people behind also struggled with the speed and diction. The nut roast man knew Hamlet very well so was more comfortable.

Star spotting: Mark Ronson was sitting in my row. I noticed another audience member who I thought must be famous, he wore knee high red patent boots with ribbons, a dashing hat and white cashmere coat. He turned out to be a stylist. I asked him afterwards where he got his boots. We exchanged instagram handles but I couldn’t find my phone. I emptied my handbag, noticing that the mapo tofu was now soaked through into my brand new Italian leather handbag. I couldn’t find the keys anywhere at all. Then I realised I had popped it into my bra, my frontal ‘pocket’.

You would enjoy this play best if you know a bit more about Hamlet. Now where is that shocking pink paint?

The Motive and The Clue until March 23rd 2024. Tickets available here at this link. 

Noël Coward Theatre

85-88 St Martin’s Lane, London, WC2N 4AP

Lanzhou Noodle Bar

Approximately £15 per person. No booking necessary.

33 Cranbourn Street

LondonWC2H 7AD