Playing Burton – The King’s Arms
Many times, actors get labelled as icons, legends and titans of their craft. Richard Burton was someone who would be extolled as such yet tempered by opinions that his was a wasted talent, squandered in the depths of a bottle of gin and never truly realised on account of his untimely death at the age of 58.
Resurrecting the man via Mark Jenkin’s rich and lyrical script is a tall order for anyone, especially where they are required to hold their audience through a long monologue. And Burton was renowned for his love of the spoken word whether in the prose of Shakespeare, the poetry of Dylan Thomas or within the scripts of the Hollywood epics he was adored for, so delivery is critical.
Off the bat, Sean Cernow neither looks, nor sounds, like Burton so it is best to put a pin in ...