Sam Mendes to Direct Play About the Making of HAMLET With Richard Burton, John Gielgud & Elizabeth Taylor

Oscar and Tony-winning director Sam Mendes will direct a new play that follows how actors Richard Burton and John Gielgud brought a production of Hamlet to Broadway in 1964, with help from Elizabeth Taylor.

Deadline reports that Jack Thorne wrote the new play, titled The Motive & the Cue, which is set for a Spring 2023 debut at the U.K. National Theatre's Lyttelton stage. The play will be produced by The National Theatre and Neal Street Productions, the team behind the recent production of The Lehman Trilogy.

Creatives from The Lehman Trilogy will reunite for The Motive & the Cue, including a set design by Es Devlin, costumes from Katrina Lindsay and lighting by Jon Clark. Sound design will be by Paul Arditti, and Benjamin Kwasi Burrell will serve as composer.

Rehearsals are set to begin in early 2023, with tickets going on sale later this year. Casting is currently underway.

The play was inspired by two books, Richard Sterne's "John Gielgud Directs Richard Burton in Hamlet" and William Redfield's "Letters From an Actor," which follow the making of a stripped-down production of Hamlet on Broadway at the Lunt-Fontanne Theater in 1964.

Gielgud directed the production, starring Burton, who had had originally seen Gielgud play the role in the 1940s. The production opened a month after Burton married Taylor for the first time.

Thorne revealed to Deadline that the play "examines the beauty of these two ages of the theatre meeting each other and what that felt like ... Burton was as strong as he ever was. Seeing the two of them finding Hamlet together when they are working from two different places just felt incredibly fascinating."

Sam Mendes recently won a Tony Award for Best Director of a Play for The Lehman Trilogy. He founded and ran The Donmar Warehouse in London for ten years. He was the founding director of The Bridge Project and Neal Street Productions.

His work has been seen at The National Theatre, RSC, Royal Court, Old Vic, Young Vic, BAM, the West End and on Broadway. Films include American Beauty, Road to Perdition, Jarhead, Revolutionary Road, Away We Go, Skyfall, Spectre, and 1917.

Watch a clip of Burton performing in the production here:

Photo Credit: Jennifer Broski