#the gielgud theatre

[ougonnotaiyou]

Paddy Considine dancing to The Rolling Stones “Street Fighting Man” song! 😍

It’s great and badass (at the same time)!  

I want so badly to see “The Ferryman” with the original cast!

Does anyone know:

1)  if there is any official recording of this play/musical? I’d like to buy an original DVD disc or an access to a digital copy!

2) if not, where I could watch it online?

It’s a shame that the play which received so many accolades is unavailable for those who haven't had a chance to see it at the theatre!

[willstafford]

Screened Off

OPENING NIGHT The Gielgud Theatre, London, Saturday 6th April 2024 John Cassavetes’s film from 1977 is something of an acquired taste, but it makes sense that someone like Rufus Wainwright would be involved in a stage adaptation, having previously explored diva-ish behaviour in his opera, Prima Donna. It’s the story of rehearsals for a Broadway play, The Second Woman, but the leading lady’s…

[faded-florals]

On a new adventure! 😱💖

[ufonaut]

saw sondheim's old friends last night at the gielgud theatre! seeing bernadette peters live has been practically a lifelong dream and getting to hear her perform send in the clowns, losing my mind, and not a day goes by had me & everyone in the audience sobbing -- after all this time, she's still completely extraordinary, funny as hell and so magnetically herself. lea salonga & the rest of the cast were incredible too, an evening far beyond any expectation i could've ever had! (28/10/2023)

[hellyescharlesedwards]

2024 marks 10 years since Charlie Edwards stepped onto the Gielgud stage as Charles Condomine in Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit, dir. Michael Blakemore.

[commiepinkofag]

He Was Born Gay, Queen's Theatre, 1937

Until the 1970s the word 'gay' still meant 'happy' to the great majority of people in Britain, although its sexual and moral connotations go back to the mid-19th century, when [female] London prostitutes were known as 'gay ladies'. The fact that it could be used in the title of a popular play in London in 1937 written by one homosexual [Emlyn Williams] and starring another [John Gielgud], proves the obscurity of its secondary meaning at this time, although both Gielgud and Williams must have been aware of the irony. — James Gardiner

[tilbageidanmark]

18 year old Richard Burton

[shakespearenews]

Watching last July, I had my own meta-theatrical experience. A few rows ahead of me, seemingly alone and pensive, was Tom Stoppard, whose Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is the most famous 20th-century drama to play games with Hamlet. If there’s one inner monologue I’d have paid West End prices to hear, it’s his response to Gatiss’s response to Gielgud’s response to Burton’s response to Hamlet.

--- Like Hamnet, however, The Motive and the Cue has an atrociously clichéd final tableau. “Zadok the Priest” swells, as Flynn-as-Burton takes the classic pose with Yorick’s skull, and captions tell us of his future triumphs and mortality. For the most part, The Motive and the Cue is a thoughtful response to the Hamlet industry. But when it comes to the big clichés, it wants to have its cake and eat it too.

[stastrodome]

Sir John Gielgud as Caesar, Jason Robards as Brutus and Shelley Fabares as Portia in 1970's Julius Caesar.

Go cry about your tenure’s end Go complain to Aunt Blabby For those who keep too many friends Life can get a little stabby

[robynsassenmyview]

For madness in great ones must not unwatch’d go

"For madness in great ones must not go unwatch'd", a review of 'The Motive and the Cue', screened by the National Theatre Live in South Africa, on 30 and 31 October 2024.

THE readiness is all: Sir John Gielgud (Mark Gatiss) and Richard Burton (Johnny Flynn) as director and performer of Hamlet in The Motive and the Cue. Photograph courtesy nationaltheatre.org.uk HAMLET: THE LITERATE world’s equivalent to Van Gogh’s ear or Beethoven’s Fifth. It contains all the must-haves in a great story: love and suicide, murder and ghosts, guilt and recriminations, and…

[burtlancster]

[batnbreakfast]

Aaaaaaaaaaaah! What a combination!!

[themarvellousmichaelbryant]

The Playbill for Five Finger Exercise when it played in Boston in October 1960.

[loureviewsblog]

Review of the Jack Thorne play about the Burton-Gielgud Broadway Hamlet, transferred to the West End from the National Theatre.

[shakespearenews]

While filming the historical drama Becket, co-stars Richard Burton and Peter O’Toole agreed that each should subsequently play Hamlet on stage. Supposedly, the two actors flipped a coin to determine the city and director each would be allocated. O’Toole landed on London and Laurence Olivier, while Burton would perform in New York, directed by John Gielgud. Amazingly, both productions went on to be staged! The O’Toole and Olivier production of Hamlet opened the National Theatre at the Old Vic in October 1963 and 2023 marks the 60th anniversary of that production.

[geofflewriter]

Miscellany

Going to the theatre, specifically the National can trigger some thoughts. We saw a play last night about Gielgud and Burton, set in New York in 1964 as they rehearsed Burton’s debut as Hamlet. It’s called The Motive and the Cue. It’s all about differing artistic approaches, peaking too soon, lack of self belief hidden in a veneer of egoism, chutzpah and arrogance. It was very good and the…