Andrew Scott’s Hamlet-within-a-film arrives in American theaters on Friday, November 20. Elsinore, in which the Irish actor plays the Scottish star Ian Charleson during his final run as Hamlet at London’s National Theatre, opens in select US cinemas through Focus Features before widening over Thanksgiving and through December.
The film already has a festival trophy shelf. It won the International People’s Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 20, and Scott took the Acting Award at the Mill Valley Film Festival on October 3. He is nominated for Outstanding Lead Performance at the Gotham Awards on November 30, ten days after the US opening.
The true story behind Elsinore
Charleson was best known worldwide as the runner and missionary Eric Liddell in Chariots of Fire, the 1981 Best Picture winner. He was also a celebrated stage actor. In the autumn of 1989, when Daniel Day-Lewis left Richard Eyre’s Hamlet at the National, Charleson took over the role while seriously ill with AIDS. He played the part from October 9 to November 13, 1989, and died on January 6, 1990, at 40.
He asked that his cause of death be made public. No British entertainer had died with AIDS named publicly as the cause before him, and the announcement helped raise awareness of the illness, according to his biography. The day after his last Hamlet, Ian McKellen won a best actor prize for his Iago and handed the statuette to Charleson, saying he had seen “the perfect Hamlet” the night before.
Focus Features calls the film “an inspiring true story” about an actor “at the height of his powers whose final performance” became “his greatest triumph.”
Who is in it
Simon Stone directs from a script by Stephen Beresford, who wrote Pride. Olivia Colman plays Margaret Johnson, Charleson’s doctor at the Royal Free Hospital. Billie Piper plays casting director Patsy Pollock, Johnny Flynn plays Richard Eyre, and Juliet Stevenson, Peter Mullan and Joe Locke round out the cast. Colman has had a busy autumn; she also voices the title animal in The Fox, the fable about a hunter who makes a deal with a talking fox.
Scott is also a producer on the film, which ties back to his own stage career. He played Hamlet himself in Robert Icke’s 2017 London production, and several of that company return here: Luke Thompson, Juliet Stevenson and David Rintoul, who was Charleson’s real best friend and now plays the actor cast as the Ghost.
A three-step release map
For international readers, Elsinore rolls out in stages. Lined up in order, the dates are:
- United States: select theaters from November 20, expanding over Thanksgiving and through December.
- Italy: January 28, 2027, through Lucky Red.
- United Kingdom: January 29, 2027, through StudioCanal.
That leaves a gap of ten weeks between the American opening and the British one, which puts the UK release in the thick of the winter awards season. Badiyaa is following that season, from Glenn Close’s honorary Oscar at the Governors Awards on November 15 onward.
The film runs 111 minutes. The next date on Scott’s calendar after the US opening is December 6, when Britain’s BIFA indie film prizes name their winners; Elsinore is up in 13 categories, including the top film award and Best Lead Performance for Scott.
Further reading
Image: TKA201, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
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