Friday 16th May at 8pm​

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MR BURTON (2025) Cert 12A
Toby Jones. Harry Lawtey, Lesley Manville. Directed by Marc Evans.

 

Richard Burton was widely regarded to be the greatest actor of British post-war theatre and cinema, the heir to Laurence Olivier's crown. Yet his path to glory was littered with obstacles, not least his turbulent, neglected upbringing in an impoverished Welsh mining family, and the multiple demons in his own personality which he was never able to escape and which were eventually to contribute to his untimely, alcohol-soaked death at the age of just 58. As this beautifully acted origin story reveals, he owed all his later success to his inspirational English teacher Philip Burton, whose own frustrated dreams of the theatre were poured into the bright young miner’s son Richard Jenkins. “Without Philip Burton there would never have been a Richard Burton,” Elizabeth Taylor later observed. “That great rolling voice that cracked like wild Atlantic waves would never have been heard outside the valley.” Mr Burton coached him in drama and later even made him his legal ward, persuading the boy to change his surname in order to facilitate an Oxford University scholarship. Harry Lawtey -- one of the breakout stars of BBC TV series Industry -- is superb as the young Richard, gradually transforming from a lanky, needy kid into the sonorous prince of the English stage. Yet the always wonderful Toby Jones is the real heart of the film as the quietly supportive Mr Burton, the counsellor, coach and therapist who gradually crafted a giant of the stage out of humblest of clay. 

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