Mr. Burton

Port Talbot, 1942. Mr Burton (Toby Jones) is teaching English to a class of teenagers. Most of the boys will take one of two routes once school is over: they’ll either go off to war, or they’ll go down the pit. But there’s another boy in the class – a boy by the name of Richie Jenkins, with a troubled home life but a passion for poetry – who will go on to do something very different with his life.

Without that teacher, Richard Burton would later say, he would never have discovered acting, let alone gone on to become one of the world’s greatest stars and the most famous Welshman of his generation. The rest of his story is well known, but this part of his life has never had much of an airing, and by focusing on the original Mr Burton, Marc Evans’ film teases out something quite different from what has been said before. It’s a film about family, about different kinds of love, and about the sacrificaes some people are forced to make in order to find their place in the world.

Harry Lawtey has a fairly impressive record for a young actor, with small but memorable roles in the likes of The Pale Blue Eye, but he makes a big impression in the demanding role of Richie, particularly in the way he uses his voice. Toby Jones is, of course, a seasoned professional, but one who rarely gets to play the lead. He is superb here, able to command viewer attention with the smallest movement. His Mr Burton is a restrained and patient man, but his passions come through clearly.

Jones, too, has challenging vocal work to do. There’s a scene about helfway through where, as an English-born actor who has assumed a Welsh accent for the role, he delivers a Welshman’s impression of an English accent, and a theatrical one at that, managing these layers without once letting the other aspects of his performance slip. His character is determined that Richie should lose his local vowels and learn to distinguish each word, at the same time as learning to project. It’s partly about achieving the clarity needed in the theatre, but – especially when the possibility of a scholarship to Oxford emerges – it’s also about sounding more English. At one point a relative takes Richie aside to protest that in changing his voice his betraying his community and losing an essential part of himself.

How much is Richie willing to give up in order to achieve his ambition – and what will it cost him? Alcohol is everywhere in the town and his father is an alcoholic. There’s little sense that he could have escaped had he remained there, but still, seeing the bottle come out at his lowest moment adds to the tragedy of it all. Meanwhile, little hints from Mr Burton’s landlady (Lesley Manville) and assorted locals will help viewers to pick up, before Richie does, on what the teacher has been forced to give up and why, with all his talent, he retreated to this quiet corner of Wales to live his life alone.

It would be easy, in a film like this, to rely on the fame of one of the characters, the skill of the performers and niche interest in the themes, but Evans has not done that. Shooting in Port Talbot itself and diligently recreating the period, he has put together a film full of finely crafted detail. It’s a celebrity biopic with none of the usual glamour, and with much wider relevance. Catch it if you can.

Reviewed on: 03 Apr 2026