Mr Burton
This ‘true story’ biopic about schoolteacher Philip Burton (1904-1995) and his part in the metamorphosis of promising pupil Richard Jenkins into superb actor Richard Burton (1925-1984), is fatally flawed by the producers’ decision to hire two English actors to play the two lead roles.
You wouldn’t know it from the reviews in the English/British media, where the glaring incongruity of two privately-educated, posh, privileged Englishmen playing two Welsh, working-class, coal miners’ sons passed without comment, but the casting of Toby Jones and Harry Lawtey as Philip and Richard was not just ludicrously inappropriate; it was also a deeply insulting, arrogantly contemptuous and highly offensive abuse of Wales.
Richard Burton’s mother tongue was Cymraeg and he didn’t speak a word of English until he was five years old. Born in the archetypal mining village of Pontrhydyfen, he was so inextricably Welsh that his voice became the very epitome and symbol of Welshness to the world. Even today, his spine-tingling rendition of the opening lines in the original 1954 radio production of Under Milk Wood stands as the unmatched, unsurpassable pinnacle of Welsh lyricism, expressiveness, resonance and sheer beauty.
He was the personification of Wales. To hire a smug, effete English luvvie to impersonate him after listening to some old film clips and interviews for a few weeks is as crass as, say, getting Michael Caine to play Laurence Olivier or Victoria Beckham to play Edith Piaf. The same applies to the thoroughly Welsh, Mountain Ash-born Philip Burton. Steeped in Welsh culture, the Welsh teaching tradition and the Welsh affinity for the performing arts, his intelligence and talent was natural and hard-earned – the polar opposite of pampered nepo baby Toby Jones, the son of two actors with connections galore, who freely admits his knowledge of Wales amounts to nothing more than a couple of holidays.
Yes, acting is of course all about pretending to be someone other than yourself, but there are limits to this process when dealing with the historically vulnerable, disrespected and under-represented – which is a precise definition of the Welsh. White actors no longer ‘black up’ to play Othello or apply yellow face paint and a droopy moustache to play Fu Manchu; however, it seems these advances are yet to reach Wales. It is all the more infuriating and perplexing in the case of Mr Burton, since neither Jones or Lawtey manage to come up with a plausible version of the two famed Welsh characters. Lawtey’s attempts at a west Glamorgan accent are all over the place and end up as a wince-inducing caricature; while Jones can’t help himself reverting to Drama School affectation. Why did the producers bother? Wouldn’t it have been easier to use real Welsh actors?
And, lest anyone should say there aren’t any actors in Wales with the ability, read this, this and this for a small fraction of some past Welsh stars of stage and screen to give just a hint of the abiding richness of the Welsh tradition of performance. The flow of talent has not ceased, bolstered as ever by the Urdd, by eisteddfodau, by S4C and by a resilient and evolving theatrical network. A host of contemporary Welsh actors could have played the elegant, distinguished, closet gay Philip Burton a lot more convincingly than the completely unsuitable, troglodyte-like, heterosexual Toby Jones, who is knocking 60 and far too old and moth-eaten to play Philip in his 30s, while Harry Lawtey, nearly 30, is likewise totally miscast as schoolboy Richard Burton through to his early twenties – to say nothing of his very 2025 pouting self-regard, Instagram-ready shallowness and gym-bunny biceps. There are plenty of young Welshmen who could have hugely improved on Lawtey’s look-at-me posturing – off the top of my head, the likes of Dyfan Dwyfor or Gerran Howell for instance.
Wales is used as a photogenic, cheap and convenient location for many films that have nothing to do with Wales, are not set in Wales, do not refer to Wales and feature no Welsh actors or technicians. That’s just about acceptable, I suppose – presumably a bit of revenue is generated, if only for those who deliver sandwiches to the film crews. But Mr Burton is set in Wales, is all about Welsh people and life, is filmed in Wales and is funded by Welsh money. If such a film doesn’t utilise Welsh actors, then which film ever will? We have gone into reverse, back to the 1941 Oscar winner How Green Was My Valley, entirely about Wales and the Welsh yet featuring a cast of American, English and Irish actors. Brilliant American director John Ford (1894-1973) had an excuse – it was filmed in Hollywood – but for Mr Burton there can be no forgiveness. Ford did use one Welsh actor, Rhys Williams (1897-1969) of Clydach in the Tawe valley, who was on the set as a technical adviser and was given the bit-part of Dai Bando. This is less cynical and condescending than what happened with Mr Burton, where a handful of minor parts went to actual Welsh actors in a blatant attempt to stifle criticism.
Most telling of all is the fact that the casting of Mr Burton undermines and dishonours the very story the film tries to tell: the story of an unknown local lad being taken under the wing of an unknown local mentor to become the greatest Welsh actor of all time. Instead of actually following Philip and Richard’s inspiring example, the film actualises the precise opposite circumstances and presents just another pay-day for established English names familiar from the telly, thus stupidly missing the chance to discover and nurture another Richard Burton for the 21st century. Here then is a most unusual howler: a film in which the production values directly contradict the theme.
A risk-adverse, low populist, unnecessary grovelling to the upper-middle-class takeover of acting in England is confirmed by the gratuitous addition of another English ‘star’, Lesley Manville. She plays ‘Ma Smith’, a very minor character in the lives of both Philip and Richard, seemingly shoe-horned in to the story to add more clout to the opening credits and chuck in a bit of box-ticking gender balance. Here we see the real motives behind the film: persuade the 18-30 demographic who make up the vast majority of cinema-goers to tear themselves away from their Netflix subscriptions and home streaming addiction and put bums on seats for a couple of hours; gather lots of approval ratings from callow ignoramuses on Rotten Tomatoes; and get not-too-bad audience figures when it’s shown on BBC4 later in the year.
The anti-Welsh casting is so fundamental that the film’s many other problems pale into insignificance: the shoddy CGI backdrops straight out of a generic satanic mills trope and nothing like 1940s Port Talbot; the persistent presentation of Wales as grim and grey as if sunshine and colour were unheard of back then; the irritatingly manipulative piano score trying to tell viewers what to feel next; the glib historical inevitability that implies the future is a foregone conclusion and everyone is clairvoyant; the prissy bowdlerisation of Philip Burton’s gayness, when it was such a major part of his identity he lived in what was then the gayest place on Earth – Key West, Florida – for the last 25 years of his life; the general dullness, torpor and mediocrity of a film that should have been gripping and moving…I could go on…suffice to say, it’s a flop. Thank goodness for my ability to doze through anything – the two hours I spent in Chapter, Canton would have otherwise been unbearable.
Who is responsible for this fiasco? First and foremost who else but Ed Talfan, boss of the film’s Cardiff production company Severn Screen (yes, he’s one of the Talfan clan that have had a vice like grip on Welsh TV and film for decades). His relentless trajectory keeps plumbing new depths of derivative, genre-chomping, dumbed down, decultured trashiness. Ditto his minions at Severn Screen and his go-to Director Marc Evans. Then there’s the film’s other financers: an obscure American production company plus BBC Wales and Ffilm Cymru, two hopeless publicly-funded bodies that need no introduction. With this lot in charge of Wales’ permanently nascent ‘film industry’ no further explanations are necessary.
Audio: YouTube
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