Marc Evans, “Mr. Burton” (2025)
Told in conventional British history drama style, “Mr. Burton” tells the story of the early life of acclaimed 20th-century Welsh actor Richard Burton (1925 – 1984). Under the tutelage of schoolteacher Philip Burton (Toby Jones), young Richard Jenkins (Harry Lawtey) rises from humble origins growing up in a coal-mining village in south Wales to become a talented stage actor, crowning his early career with a performance as Prince Hal in productions of the Shakespearean plays “King Henry IV, Part I” and “King Henry IV, Part 2” at the Shakespeare Memorial Hall in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1951. In real life, Richard Jenkins – at age 18 years, he became the legal ward of Philip Burton and adopted the teacher’s surname as his own – had a more complicated route as a stage actor AND film actor before appearing on the stage as Prince Hal but the film does take liberties with what actually happens during Jenkins’s adolescence / young adulthood to produce a streamlined (if sometimes slow) narrative about how a young man can overcome a troubled family history of early loss, grinding poverty, broken relationships, alcoholic addiction and other traumas to achieve a life-long dream of being an actor with the help and support of mentors who recognise his innate talents and fierce ambitions.
Initially the film revolves around Philip Burton, known as PH, and his frustrations at being passed over as a dramatist and actor in his own right, due in part to his own humble beginnings as the Welsh-born son of a coal miner himself working in an environment dominated by English middle class people. Through his work as a schoolteacher, he meets Jenkins who at age 16 years is already under pressure from his sister and her husband (with whom he lives) to leave school and get a job. Jenkins does in fact end up leaving school, but PH persuades the school’s administrators to readmit the boy. Jenkins recommences school and admits dreaming of becoming an actor to PH. From then on, PH starts training Jenkins in unorthodox ways of improving his diction and developing his voice. At a later time, when Jenkins’s sister and her family are finding making ends meet difficult, PH arranges for Jenkins to come live with him in the boarding-house run by Mrs Smith (Lesley Manville). When the possibility of Jenkins attending Oxford University on a scholarship arises, his surname and lodgings with PH become an issue, and (in a scene apparently based more on rumour rather than fact) PH persuades Jenkins’s father to agree to his son becoming PH’s legal ward and using his surname.
Unnecessarily in my view, the script raises the possibility of PH having a homosexual interest in young Jenkins – PH was known to be gay – to create tension between the two, who fall out in spectacular fashion. Despite the conflict, Jenkins / Burton gets his scholarship to attend university, and the film starts jumping several years into the future to portray Burton as a swaggering young rebel, with fame starting to rush to his head, yet still insecure and even terrified at the thought of playing Prince Hal in a major stage production that may make or break his reputation.
The acting is well done with Jones outstanding in his role as PH, encouraging the young Jenkins to work hard and disciplining him for his wild behaviour. Lawtey has the more difficult job in navigating from the awkward teenage Jenkins to 20-something Angry Young Man / Rebel Without A Cause in a script that moves slowly initially and then jumps too fast eight years into the future; his performance is uneven, but he does good work in portraying something of Richard Burton’s talent and charisma. Manville provides excellent support as the boarding-house owner / keeper, though we see too little of her and her character is little more than a stereotype. Other actors, in particular Aimée Ffion-Edwards as Cis, who brings up the young Jenkins, and Aneurin Barnard as Cis’s husband Elfed, give solid support.
Despite the good performances, the film itself is disappointing in its portrayal of the relationship between PH and the future Richard Burton, making uncalled-for insinuations about PH’s intentions towards his protege and then backing off, and leaving big gaps in-between the teenager’s final school year and his eventual metamorphosis into a rising star of British film and stage. Visual details in the early part of the film – the grimy coal-mining surrounds of Port Talbot where our narrative is set were done with CGI – look flat and one-dimensional. The film’s chronologically based narrative structure makes what should have been an interesting and intriguing story of Cinderella-like rags-to-riches transformation look stale and tired. One hopes though that this film will encourage its audiences to explore a bit deeper into the real Richard Burton’s background and early career to find what really made him tick as an outstanding actor of his generation.