Andrew Scott in Powerful Ian Charleson Drama

The late British stage and screen actor Ian Charleson, who died of AIDS-related causes in 1990 at age 40, is mostly remembered for his role in the 1981 Oscar winner Chariots of Fire. That inescapable attachment haunts Charleson, played with raw determination, grace and an almost overwhelming depth of feeling by Andrew Scott in Elsinore, a tremendously moving account of the final year in the Scottish actor’s life. When his agent reminds him that he starred in one of the most celebrated films of all time, Charleson shoots back: “And all anybody can remember about it is the theme music.” 

Scott’s searing dual performance — as Charleson and as Hamlet in a National Theatre production that became both the ultimate challenge and fulfillment of his professional career — makes Simon Stone’s film an emotional powerhouse even if it doesn’t avoid inspirational cliché. But it’s a vivid picture of London at the height of the AIDS crisis and a stirring gesture of gratitude to art, specifically theater, as a lifeline even when death looms large.

While Charleson’s heroic run of 24 performances in the title role of Hamlet is as much a part of London theater lore as the abrupt exit from Richard Eyre’s 1989 production of Daniel Day-Lewis, it will be less familiar to audiences farther afield.

The script by Stephen Beresford (Pride) lives and breathes the stage community and its cozy familial camaraderie, from actors and directors to wardrobe, makeup and tech personnel. The bustle of theater luvvies all fondly addressing one another as “darling” will be especially amusing for audiences with any exposure to that world.

As a film about a painful chapter in queer history, it mines considerable humor from the extent to which gay slang seeps into the entire milieu, regardless of sexuality.

One hilarious example is Monica Dolan, marvelous as Linda Tolhurst, the National’s stage door supervisor for 50 years and counting. Charleson was already chummy with the building’s fixtures after playing Sky Masterson in the company’s smash 1982 Guys and Dolls revival; when he arrives for the first table read after being cast to replace Day-Lewis as Hamlet, Linda greets him dryly with, “’Ere she is, Takeover Tina!”

While Charleson initially established himself as a stage actor, his primary international recognition came from back-to-back best picture Oscar winners Chariots of Fire and Gandhi. But despite working steadily, he struggled to keep the momentum of a screen career going. Growing tired of all the waiting around on film shoots for mostly unrewarding projects, Charleson became anxious to get back to the theater, especially given the ticking clock of his HIV+ diagnosis.

Stone’s film shows the confusion of backstage workers and fellow cast when Day-Lewis collapses and then walks offstage during the Act I scene on the castle ramparts in which Hamlet encounters his father’s ghost. While the screenplay doesn’t go into the then-rising star’s reasons for abandoning the production, it’s no secret that Day-Lewis was unsettled by a connection to his own father’s absence, even if his exit was widely attributed to exhaustion. 

That footnote in London theater history creates an opportunity for Charleson, who previously played Hamlet though believed he was neither famous nor posh enough ever to land the role at the National. When he is approached by Eyre — identified only as Richard (Johnny Flynn) — who had directed him in Guys and Dolls, Ian feels duty-bound to inform him of his medical condition. 

The first appearance of a lesion on his forehead — after inspecting every inch of his body with a hand mirror each day — marked Ian’s progression to full-blown AIDS. Richard automatically assumes he will be unable to take on the demanding role, but Ian’s passion and drive convince him, with both men agreeing to keep his illness quiet. 

A lovely scene on cruisy Hampstead Heath takes creative license with the formation of the London chapter of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, drag nuns advocating for AIDS awareness and safer sex practices. (In reality, that group didn’t appear in the British capital until the early ‘90s.) Ian asks Sister Frigidity of the Nocturnal Emission (Kadiff Kirwan) how long he has left, prompting the veiled activist to summon a young man from elsewhere in the park, still alive two years after his first lesion appeared. 

Instantly recognizing the mark on Charleson’s face for what it is, the National’s wardrobe master (Paul Chahidi) sends him to see Dr. Margaret Johnson (Olivia Colman), a U.K. pioneer of HIV and AIDS treatment. Colman is in blazing form, her clipped manner contrasting with the medic’s self-evident compassion. Instructing Ian to start coming for daily clinic checkups, she makes no effort to hide her anger that the actor is increasing his risk of decline by placing himself in a high-pressure situation. Developments with the terse character later in the film are profoundly affecting.

Scenes at the clinic, where gay men constantly encounter friends and ex-lovers receiving treatment at various stages of the illness, are a sharp evocation of a time when the proliferation of men looking suddenly gaunt and weak sparked terror in the entire queer community.

Charleson’s vibrantly drawn inner circle of friends is led by his bestie, casting director Patsy Pollock (Billie Piper), her daughter Alice (Sadie Soverall) and his constant companion Sean (Matthew Beard). The latter is identified, like Eyre, only by his first name, but the character is based on Sean Mathias, who directed Charleson that year in an all-star benefit performance of Martin Sherman’s play Bent, about pink-triangle persecution in Nazi Germany.

One of the most fascinating insights into queer history comes with the appearances of iconoclastic director Derek Jarman (David Dawson), a friend for whom Charleson had played a punk angel in 1978’s Jubilee. As his own illness progresses, Derek urges Ian to go public about his health, to help destigmatize AIDS and hammer home the reality of the plague for Brits outside of LGBTQ circles. 

This brings up the conflicts for gay actors at the time who felt the need to keep their sexuality hidden for fear of career damage. “You have a responsibility to the dead, to the dying,” Derek tells him. Reflecting on his choice to stay silent (until after his death) Ian says, “Of course, in the theater no one gives a fuck.” But there was more at stake back then — and still to some extent now — for actors seeking on-camera work.

See Also

Roku Sees Higher Revenue, Positive Net Income For 2025

For anyone who recalls Jarman’s seismic influence on queer cinema with uncompromising films like Sebastiane, The Angelic Conversation, Caravaggio and Edward II, hearing the director say “Ian, remember me” with the knowledge that any encounter could be their last cuts deep. The same goes for Charleson visiting him at the fisherman’s cottage in coastal Dungeness where he lived at the time, when Jarman tells him that he’s going blind. His loss of vision shaped his experimental swan-song feature, 1993’s Blue.

If all this makes Elsinore sound like a film primarily for a niche audience of queer historians, that’s not the case. As Charleson digs into Hamlet rehearsals, insisting on working late even when he’s physically diminished, Scott conveys the actor’s dedication to his craft with both self-sacrifice and hubris. As Richard says of the play: “It’s about being alive and becoming dead.” 

While Stone is not always the most subtle of directors and Beresford’s dialogue often doesn’t tread lightly, a scene in which Ian gathers the entire cast to give an honest account of his condition — after being forced into a hiatus when he is hospitalized during previews — is as heartwarming as it is wrenching. But it’s in the performance scenes that Scott truly elevates the material, drawing on intersections between the Shakespearean role and Ian’s own thoughts of mortality.

Many audiences will be wrecked by pretty much the entire second half of the movie, the final scenes in particular, in which editor Valerio Bonelli crosscuts between the stage performance and Ian’s bedroom at home, where he is fading fast, comforted by Patsy. When Laertes tells the wounded prince at the end of the Act 5 sword fight, “Hamlet, thou art slain,” I was a mess.

While the fire at the core of the film is all Scott, in a physical, psychological and emotional performance that leaves nothing on the table, there’s gorgeous work throughout the ensemble. Colman superbly nails the seeming contradiction between professional medical detachment and humaneness. Piper — whom Stone directed on stage to huge acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic in his adaptation of Lorca’s Yerma — embodies the cherished female friend who is a sustaining force in the lives of so many gay men. And an unrecognizable Flynn makes Eyre a shining example of the director as nurturer and protector. 

There are standout moments for Luke Thompson as Georgie, a composite character representing Ian’s past relationships; Juliet Stevenson as Sylvia Sims, portrayed as a grand dame of British thespianism while playing Gertrude in the National production; Beard as a friend whose selfless devotion to Ian’s care is on par with Patsy’s; and Heartstopper’s Joe Locke as an admiring young actor hungry for mentorship, befriended by Ian at the clinic. 

The most devastating scenes for many will be those with Ian’s parents, Jean (Georgie Glen) and Jack (Peter Mullan), working-class Scots confronted with the double whammy that their son is not only gay but dying, a confessional ordeal common to many AIDS patients at the time. Both actors are wonderful, with Jean’s anguish immediately apparent and Jack’s sputtering to the surface in a delayed reaction in the hospital car park.

It’s a nice touch that one of Charleson’s surviving Chariots of Fire castmates, Nigel Havers, pops up as an AIDS clinic donor, alongside Ian’s close friend and University of Edinburgh classmate, fellow actor Hilton McRae. The latter is the longtime husband of Lindsay Duncan, Charleson’s co-star in a landmark 1988 National Theatre production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. There’s a nice “friends and family” aspect to these and other connections.

Whatever weaknesses there are in the direction and script, the film makes enormous gains in intimacy and authenticity by eliminating any of the barriers of outsider observation. The full-throated investment in the parallel queer, theatrical, medical and outpatient communities is unquestionably personal. 

Stone relies more than necessary on Stefan Gregory’s lush orchestral score to push emotional buttons. But the strategic use in one joyously tender scene of The Ethel Merman Disco Album — once a cringey embarrassment, now a beloved bit of queer pop cultural kitsch — will spark fun associations for many gay men over a certain age. The Merm belting out “There’s No Business Like Show Business” to a disco backbeat might be a million brassy miles from Shakespeare, but Elsinore lovingly folds those two extremes together.