Andrew Scott portrays Ian Charleson’s final Hamlet performances in Elsinore
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Elsinore, directed by Simon Stone, dramatises the final year in the life of Scottish actor Ian Charleson, who died of AIDS-related causes in 1990 aged 40, focusing on his celebrated run as Hamlet at the National Theatre. Andrew Scott plays Charleson in a dual performance, also embodying Hamlet within the play-within-the-film, in what the Hollywood Reporter's review calls an emotional powerhouse that vividly portrays London's theatre world at the height of the AIDS crisis, though it doesn't entirely escape inspirational cliché.
Charleson, internationally known chiefly for Chariots of Fire and Gandhi, took over the role of Hamlet after Daniel Day-Lewis abruptly walked off stage during Richard Eyre's 1989 production, going on to give 24 performances despite concealing his declining health from all but director Eyre (Johnny Flynn). Stephen Beresford's script, warm with backstage camaraderie and gay slang woven through theatre culture, features standout supporting work from Monica Dolan as stage door supervisor Linda Tolhurst, alongside scenes depicting the era's queer community, including a Hampstead Heath sequence involving the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.
- Andrew Scott plays actor Ian Charleson in AIDS-era drama Elsinore
- Charleson took over Hamlet after Daniel Day-Lewis's real 1989 walkout
- Review praises it as a moving, if occasionally clichéd, tribute to theatre
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Andrew Scott is the actor known for roles in Fleabag, Sherlock and All of Us Strangers. In Elsinore, directed by Simon Stone, he plays a real-life figure: Ian Charleson, a Scottish actor best known internationally for the films Chariots of Fire and Gandhi.
Charleson took over the lead role in a National Theatre production of Hamlet in 1989, after Daniel Day-Lewis unexpectedly walked off stage and left the production. Charleson went on to perform the part 24 times while secretly living with HIV, and died of AIDS-related illness in 1990 at the age of 40. The film is set during this period, against the backdrop of London's theatre scene at the height of the AIDS crisis.
The story matters because the film revisits a significant, real episode in British theatre history and the wider AIDS epidemic of the late 1980s, using a well-known contemporary actor to portray both Charleson himself and his final, celebrated performance as Hamlet.
Full account
Elsinore, a new film starring Andrew Scott, dramatises the final year in the life of the British actor Ian Charleson, who died of AIDS-related causes in 1990 at the age of 40. Directed by Simon Stone from a screenplay by Stephen Beresford, the film centres on Charleson's celebrated 1989 run in the title role of Hamlet at the National Theatre in London, a part he took on after Daniel Day-Lewis abandoned the production partway through its run. Both accounts of the film describe Scott's performance as a demanding dual role, playing Charleson as he in turn plays the Danish prince, and both single it out as the picture's most striking achievement.
The story is rooted in a real and much-discussed piece of theatre history. Day-Lewis, then a rising star, is shown walking off stage mid-performance during the scene in which Hamlet meets his father's ghost, never to return to the role. Charleson stepped in to replace him despite knowing he was HIV-positive, going on to complete a run of some two dozen performances that became legendary in London theatre circles. Away from the stage, Charleson is portrayed as a man whose screen career had stalled after the outsized success of Chariots of Fire and Gandhi; he is haunted by the fact that audiences remember the former chiefly for its Vangelis score rather than his performance as Eric Liddell, and he had drifted into unrewarding film work before returning to the theatre with the clock of his diagnosis running.
Much of the film is given over to the affectionate, gossipy world backstage at the National, taking in actors, directors, wardrobe and stage-door staff, with Monica Dolan's veteran stage-door keeper Linda Tolhurst singled out as a comic highlight. The screenplay also revisits Charleson's earlier collaboration with the director Derek Jarman, played by David Dawson, on the 1978 film Jubilee, and the friction caused by Charleson's later attempts to distance himself from it as he tried to manage a public image in a still largely unaccepting industry. Set against the backdrop of the AIDS crisis, the film is described as using the camaraderie and slang of theatre life, and Charleson's own guarded private life as a gay man, to explore themes of mortality, sacrifice and art as a source of meaning in the face of death.
The two accounts of the film converge in their admiration for Scott's performance and for the film's evocation of a vanished theatrical London, but they place their emphasis differently. One account foregrounds the tenderness of the backstage ensemble and treats the film primarily as a tribute to theatre as a lifeline, while allowing that it can tip into uplifting cliché. The other frames the story more sceptically around Charleson's status as a fading screen star and lingers on the Day-Lewis walkout as a hook, on the ironic afterlife of Chariots of Fire's soundtrack, and on the tension between Charleson's private gay life and his cautious public persona, including his fraught history with Jarman. Together they suggest a film that is being read both as a heartfelt ensemble tribute and as a pointed character study of a man caught between fame, sexuality and mortality.
Where outlets differ
One source frames the film chiefly as a warm, communal tribute to theatre and backstage life, emphasising camaraderie, humour and Andrew Scott's performance as an emotional high point, while acknowledging the film risks inspirational cliché.
The other source frames the story more around Ian Charleson's fading screen stardom, opening with the Daniel Day-Lewis walkout as its hook, and dwelling more on the irony of Chariots of Fire's Vangelis score overshadowing his performance.
The second source places more emphasis on Charleson's private gay life and the tension between that and his public professional image, including his strained history with Derek Jarman over the film Jubilee, whereas the first source treats the Jarman/gay-culture material more in passing.
The first source gives more space to specific backstage characters and dialogue (e.g. the stage-door supervisor Linda Tolhurst) as evidence of the film's affectionate depiction of theatre community, a detail not covered in the second excerpt.
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Originally published by The Hollywood Reporter as “‘Elsinore’ Review: Andrew Scott Is Shattering as British Actor Ian Charleson, Throwing Himself Into Playing Hamlet While Succumbing to AIDS”.