Mr. Burton
Toby Jones stars in the true story of how a Port Talbot school teacher helped fashion a global superstar.
Toby Jones as Philip Burton
Image courtesy of Icon Film Distribution.
It's impossible not to have high expectations when settling down to watch a film which includes in its cast both Toby Jones and Lesley Manville. Furthermore, the work that now brings them together has potentially interesting subject matter. Many will be aware that the actor Richard Burton had in his youth a mentor, Philip Burton, whose role in his life would lead to Richard Jenkins (his birth name) becoming Richard Burton. However, the details of their shared history are much less well known so to have this new film centred on Philip Burton and the role he played in turning his protégé into the actor we all remember is an inviting prospect. Yet in the event, as handled by the writers Tom Bullough and Josh Hyams, the film is decidedly a let-down – and all the more so as it goes on.
In fact, Mr. Burton is a work that falls into two sections. The first – and much the longer – is the better of the two and is concerned with the period when young Richard Jenkins, the son of a miner, was living in Wales and came to know Philip Burton in the school where Richard was a pupil and Mr Burton a teacher (the latter being the role taken by Toby Jones). The boy’s life was far from easy since his mother had died within two years of his birth, his father, a coal miner (Steffan Rhodri), was a drinker and a gambler and Richard was the twelfth of thirteen children. In these circumstances, his older sister whom he called Cis (Aimee-Ffion Edwards) became a virtual mother to him and he came to live with her and her husband Elfed (Aneurin Barnard) along with their two daughters. But it was Philip Burton who by 1942 was aware that his class contained a youth with an interest in acting and with a potential talent for it that would be unlikely to find an outlet unless a mentor encouraged him. Philip Burton, who also did work for the BBC and wrote plays, was passionate about theatre and he put Richard into amateur productions, helped him to enunciate his words and saw to it that he was enabled to continue his education after financial considerations threatened to end it. It would also be Philip Burton who would pave the way for Richard to obtain a scholarship at Oxford. It was relatively early on when Richard left Cis and Elfed to take up accommodation in Burton's lodgings and, as his indebtedness to Burton grew and their bond (almost that of a father and son) became so significant, the stage was reached when in 1943 Richard Jenkins became the ward of Philip Burton and took his surname.
This is the material handled in the first two thirds or more of Mr. Burton and because Richard Burton was so young at the time it proves not too problematic to find an actor to play the role, someone whom we can indeed think of as the man who would in due course become known to us through his subsequent acting career. Furthermore, Harry Lawtey who takes this central role acquits himself very well. Nevertheless, for the most part this film by Marc Evans comes across as the kind of material that one associates with easy television viewing rather than anything of greater depth. It is in any case decidedly scrappy in its early scenes as they switch between the school, Philip Burton's lodgings (it’s his landlady who is played by Lesley Manville), the household where Richard lives with Cis and her family and the bar where Richard's father drinks. As for exteriors, they often suggest sets rather than the real thing. That the players are good obviously helps, but in Manville's case it is all too clear that her role is a supporting one with nothing about it worthy of her talent. Toby Jones fares better for a time but as the film develops the screenplay seems uncertain how it wants to present the character of Philip Burton.
For the most part Mr. Burton seems intent on setting up the titular figure as a sympathetic mentor without whom the actor Richard Burton would never have emerged as he did. That view has long been known but, fairly or not, in more recent times other opinions of Philip Burton have emerged. Not least the biographer Roger Lewis in his recent book about Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, Erotic Vagrancy, has described this mentor as creepy and suffocating suggesting that, even if he has no actual proof, he thinks it likely that Philip Burton was a paedophile. In Mr. Burton the probability of gossip over the teacher sharing accommodation with the youth is indeed raised and when drunk Richard’s father describes Philip Burton as a poofter. This seems to play a part in Richard eventually moving away and it could be seen as a cause that contributed to his subsequent heavy drinking but, having brought up this possibility, Mr. Burton drops it like a hot potato and reverts wholeheartedly to viewing Burton as a sympathetic loner and positive influencer. In the process it limits the chances for Toby Jones to create a character that goes beyond the rather too familiar figure of the lovable mentor.
Rather bizarrely Mr. Burton suddenly leaps ahead eight years jumping over Richard Burton’s early-stage work and first film roles to show him rehearsing at Stratford for the part of Prince Hal in a staging of Henry IV, Parts I and II. It is here that Shakespeare portrays the prince turning his back on Falstaff when he becomes king and one wonders if Bullough and Hyams chose to feature this particular staging in order to play with a possible parallel: will Richard Burton similarly reject Philip Burton when he re-enters his life and arrives in Stratford to help his prodigy who is struggling with the role of Prince Hal and at odds with his director? Whatever the intent, these later scenes which extend from the actor’s despair (“Nobody can sort me out”) to an eventual affirmation of his mentor ("I owe you everything”) quite fail to convince as presented here. That is in part because the inner conflicts causing Richard Burton's behaviour are not sufficiently clear to us. But in addition, it matters now that Harry Lawtey can’t emulate the qualities so unique to Burton (not least that voice) and the brief extracts from the play meant to represent its opening night success fail to make us believe in the actor’s triumph. What is no surprise is that on this occasion not only Philip Burton but also his landlady are in the audience because, whether they were or not, in this kind of film they would be. In later times Philip Burton who moved to America would sometimes be a help to Richard (he played a key role in the Broadway success of Camelot) but he would also at times be referred to by his former protégé in decidedly disparaging terms. However, this film settles for telling us that they remained close throughout their lives.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Cast: Toby Jones, Harry Lawtey, Lesley Manville, Aimee-Ffion Edwards, Steffan Rhodri, Aneurin Barnard, Hannah New, Mali O’Donnell, Daniel Evans, Hubert Burton, Hamish Gray.
Dir Marc Evans, Pro Ed Talfan, Josh Hyams, Hannah Thomas and Trevor Matthews, Screenplay Tom Bullough and Josh Hyams, Ph Stuart Biddlecombe, Pro Des Tim Dickel, Ed Tim Hodges, Music John Hardy, Costumes Stewart Meachem.
BBC Wales/Severn Screen/Ffilm Cymru Wales/Brookstreet Pictures/Moo Studios/Promise Pictures-Icon Film Distribution.
124 mins. UK. 2025. UK Rel: 4 April 2025. Cert. 12A.
