DRAMA; 2hr 4min
STARRING: Harry Lawtey, Toby Jones, Lesley Manville
Father figure: Jones (left) and Lawtey
In 1942, the rough diamond who would shine as supernova Richard Burton is 17-year-old Richie Jenkins (Lawtey) of Port Talbot, Wales. Being that Richie’s widower father, Dic (Steffan Rhodri), loves a drink or ten and has no space for him at home, Richie scrapes by with his resigned older sister, Cis (Aimee-Ffion Edwards), and her belligerent husband, coal miner Elfed (Aneurin Barnard), who turns his nose up at book learning, insisting Richie quit school for a haberdashery job.
That could have been a future sliced-and-diced if it weren't for Richie’s unassuming English teacher (and sometime playwright), Philip “PH” Burton (Jones), whose mildness masks a passion for theatre. It’s through PH that Richie discovers his love of performing, courtesy of a PH-directed YMCA play whose scene he steals. And it’s further thanks to PH’s persuasive ways that Elfed and the school powers-that-be consent to Richie’s reinstatement, thereby paving his way to a scholarship at Oxford University.
Once Richie is re-ensconced in school, now with dreams of acting for a living, PH takes him fully under his fussy wing, tutoring him in elocution (oh, that voice!) and self-belief, securing him a room in the house in which he boards with motherly landlady Ma Smith (Manville), and eventually going on to adopt him, partly to silence fallacious rumours about their relationship but essentially to help enable that incredible scholarship.
Take a bow, both Mr Burtons, for the forging of an uphill path to the self-realisation Richie Jenkins could never otherwise have foreseen, from a “scared and hunted” boy to a passionate performer worshipped by the world. Recreated with a refreshing lack of fanfare by Welsh director Marc Evans and a cast well aware of their duty of care, Richie’s metamorphosis packs a poignant punch when it finally does let go. Lawtey has his actorly work cut out for him throughout, while as the guiding light in a baptism of fire, Jones is the soul of the life-as-art show.
