The Importance of Backstage Drama in Creating a Great Performance

A new play called “The Motive and the Cue,” directed by Sam Mendes and written by Jack Thorne, stars Mark Gatiss, Johnny Flynn, and Tuppence Middleton. The play follows the backstage drama during rehearsals for a 1964 Broadway production of Hamlet directed by the revered Shakespearian actor John Gielgud and starring Richard Burton as the lead.

The play opened to enthusiastic reviews in May and runs through July 15 at the National Theater, in London, and was developed by Neal Street Productions.

During the first coronavirus lockdown of 2020, Mendes was thinking about why theater mattered and what went into creating great performances. He recalled reading a copy of “Letters From an Actor,” an account of the 1964 “Hamlet,” by William Redfield, who played Guildenstern in the production.

The idea was a play based on the fraught relationship between the rambunctious, hard-drinking Burton and the repressed, elegant Gielgud during rehearsals, with the added combustible element of a sidelined, glamorous Taylor, who sat out her honeymoon in a hotel suite.

Mendes called Thorne, the playwright behind the stage blockbuster “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” and the television series “His Dark Materials,” and suggested the rehearsal dynamics might provide fruitful material. Initially unsure, Thorne found focus by understanding the position that Gielgud was in at the time, being out of favour with the public and having no better offers.

Gielgud wanted a more sensitively tuned portrayal of Hamlet for Burton’s deeper emotions, whereas Burton wanted something modern, thus creating tensions between the two. Elizabeth Taylor plays a crucial yet sidelined role, sitting out her honeymoon as the famous couple tries to find balance.

The set uses scrims to create seamless transitions between the “Hamlet” rehearsals, a pink hotel suite, and scenes of intimate encounters. One of these intimate scenes is between Gielgud and Taylor, where she provides psychological insight that allows the director to find a way to Burton. As Tuppence Middleton, who plays Taylor, describes her character, “Elisabeth is the voice of reason, one of the wisest characters in the play.”

Much of the play is concerned with how to play Hamlet: The breakthrough moment for Burton happens when he connects his painful past to the character’s motivations. “This is what actors have to do when they strip themselves down to play a role,” Thorne said.

In the end, the 1964 production was a triumph, running for 136 performances; “The Motive and the Cue” has been a hit, too. It is currently playing to sold-out houses, and its popularity suggests that the play’s central ideas — theater as a community and a crucible of emotional connection between actors and the audience — have resonated after the enforced closures of the last few years. As Thorne said, “It’s about fathers and sons, classicism and modernity, the clash of these forces. But I hope it’s also about why we do what we do, what it feels like and what it costs.”