THEATRICAL LEGEND HAS IT THAT when Richard Burton and Peter O’Toole were filming Becket in 1963, they decided that they should each play Hamlet on stage. These were two legendarily thirsty actors, and it is possible that drink may have been taken. They flipped a coin to determine which of them should be directed by John Gielgud and which by Laurence Olivier, the two greatest Hamlets of the previous era. Burton got Gielgud. History does not record who was thought to have won the toss.
Sir John Gielgud, from a prominent theatrical family, first saw in 1912 when he was eight, and what eight-year-old doesn’t love a four-hour blank verse tragedy about an existential crisis? Gielgud would go on to play the Dane five times between 1930 and 1946. Burton, a coal miner’s son, was a great admirer. However, the rehearsals in Toronto for their 1964 Broadway production were fraught, with director and leading
