Mr Burton and how 'the 'voice' was born

In a week that’s all about strong performances – good or bad – it’s appropriate that the film Mr Burton shows the development of one of the great performers of the Twentieth Century.

And despite the title, it’s not cut and dried who Mr Burton is – teacher Philip Burton, or his most famous pupil, later to be known to the world as Richard Burton.

Long before his stellar career – first on stage, then on film, not to mention the travelling circus that was his various marriages to Elizabeth Taylor - he was a scruffy Welsh lad called Richie Jenkins.

His school career was undistinguished - he only seemed to be there for the rugby - and his teacher Mr Burton had no great expectations for him.

But nobody had many expectations in Port Talbot in 1942. Richie, like most of his class, would soon be called up for the war. His family was a mess – a prolific father with too many kids to keep up with. Richie was mostly brought up in his sister’s family.

But he had a growing interest in reading and acting. And theatre was Philip Burton’s obsession.

Burton is played by Toby Jones, so it’s no surprise he’s immediately appealing. An Englishman transferred to Wales, he lives at Mrs Smith’s boarding house – everyone calls her “Ma”. And he’s so impressed by Richie’s early performances at the local theatre that he takes him under his wing.

He agrees to teach Richie acting. First, he has to do something about the boy’s garbled Welsh accent. It may take a while, but we’re watching the birth of one of the great voices of the English stage.

As I say, this is a film about performances. And while Jones, and Lesley Manville as Ma Smith, are as wonderful as we’ve grown to expect, all eyes are on the untried centre of the film.

Young actor Harry Lawtey is not only unknown to most of us, he’s not even Welsh, for goodness sake!

At the start of the film, Richie’s lost and rudderless. Even his acting is a bit chaotic and undisciplined.

And then, just like that, he gets the voice. It’s a quite stunning moment that neither we nor Philip Burton see coming.

Suddenly a university scholarship seems, not an impossible dream, but somehow achievable.

It’s at Oxford that Richie Jenkins becomes ‘Richard Burton’. With no chance of assistance from his own feckless father, he turns to a new father figure. And suddenly there he is – a little booze-sodden and short-tempered, neither of which traits he ever quite shook off.

Harry Lawtey – and Richie Jenkins – have both vanished, and there, front and centre on stage, is Richard Burton, about to conquer the world.

This is the centenary of Richard Burton’s birth, and over those hundred years, the man and his achievements are perhaps a little dimmer in the memory than they would have been at the height of his career.

Hamlet and Camelot on stage, Cleopatra and The Spy Who Came In From the Cold on screen, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf on both.

But his spell is all over this film. Burton became the greatest star ever to come out of Wales - even bigger than another Port Talbot boy, Sir Anthony Hopkins. And he owed it all, as he freely admitted, to one person - To Mr Burton.

Listen to Simon Morris review the latest films in At The Movies, available here or on Sundays at 1.30pm on RNZ National.