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 ultimately, everyone dies. But central to Hamlet is the play within a play. Under the direction of Sam Mendes and Zoe Ford, you can see a version of Hamlet courtesy of the National Theatre Live, in South Africa, that is not only a play within a play, but a film of a play within a play within a play. And it’s astonishing. This is The Motive and the Cue, featuring Mark Gatiss in the role of Sir John Gielgud, and there are two more screenings of it, in Johannesburg, Pretoria, Cape Town and Durban, on 30 and 31 October 2024.

This play, written by Jack Thorne, is a focus on the anecdotes that brought some of American theatre’s greats together, in the 1960s, in what was a groundbreaking theatrical production that effectively shifted an understanding of Hamlet for good. But the process was not a happy one. Gielgud directed the work. He had established the moniker of being the epitome of classical performer. In the role of Hamlet himself, was Richard Burton (Johnny Flynn) – a modernist, at his most self-aware brilliance. He was at the time married to Elizabeth Taylor (Tuppence Middleton).

And the fireworks begin from the get-go. While there are moments of domesticity ranging from crudely amorous, to downright spiteful that make you feel as though you’re sitting through a rendition of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, there are others that showcase the two giants – Gielgud and Burton – on fiercely opposite sides of theatrical interpretation, bringing in the words and ideas of the Bard with complete perfection.

Like the premises of South African artist William Kentridge’s The Centre of the Less Good Idea, this work is about the underbelly of theatre making itself, and as such, it gloriously exposes the core of what it is all about. It’s a record not only of the 1962 work but it also serves as a portrait of the theatre luminaries themselves, embracing Burton’s alcoholism and Gielgud’s homosexuality in a homophobic world with a directness and a tenderness that are almost hard to watch.

Gatiss is magnificent as Gielgud, and Flynn is a perfect Burton, but Middleton less so, in her interpretation of Taylor. She feels too ditsy and whiny and lightweight in her dialogue and engagement with all the characters and her own status. The Elizabeth Taylor you might have watched over the years in various roles on stage and film, arguably was more velvety and intense, more spiteful and strategic.

The Motive and the Cue is a work as much about the hierarchy and debauched embarrassing nature of theatre makers, who feed off one another’s intimacies as it is about the greatness they can produce when under the spotlight and in the spell of the work itself. Beautifully staged and sensitively lit, it is a sheer treat.

• The Motive and the Cue is directed by Zoe Ford and Sam Mendes and performed by Allan Corduner, Elena Delia, Ryan Ellsworth, Johnny Flynn, Mark Gatiss, Aysha Kala, Tuppence Middleton, Luke Norris, Huw Parmenter, Michael Walters and Laurence Ubong Williams. Written by Jack Thorne, it is produced by Pippa Harris and Caro Newling, and features creative input by Benjamin Kwas Burrell (composer) and Michelle MacMillan (wardrobe). Originally performed at the Noel Coward  Theatre in London, it is being broadcast by National Theatre Live in South Africa at Cinema Nouveau in Rosebank, Brooklyn Commercial in Pretoria, Gateway Commercial in Durban and the V&A Ster Kinekor in Cape Town, on 30 and 31 October 2024.