In late 1989, Daniel Day-Lewis walked off the National Theatre’s Hamlet. Ian Charleson, the Scottish actor from Chariots of Fire, took the part. He’d been diagnosed with AIDS. He played it anyway, 24 times, before he got too sick to go on. He died in January 1990.
Elsinore is that story. Andrew Scott plays Charleson. Focus Features opens it in select U.S. theaters Nov. 20, with more markets through Thanksgiving and December.
“That he would go for treatment in the morning and then play this Olympian role is just endlessly moving,” Scott said in an interview at the Telluride Film Festival, published by the Daily Gazette.
Andrew Scott on Ian Charleson, AIDS and Being Told to Stay Quiet
Scott, who’s Irish and openly gay, said the era hits close. “When I was a young adult, that’s what I was scared of,” he said of AIDS. He described people living through it “completely abandoned by your government.”
He also talked about being told to keep quiet. “Very well-meaning people said to me, ‘Just keep that [private] because you’re not obviously gay,'” Scott said. “But it was so insidious.” He said he’d leave things out of interviews early on. “I wouldn’t lie, but I really understood that about Ian’s generation.”
At the London Film Festival, which Elsinore opened on Oct. 7, he told Reuters the goal was “to remember how he lived as much as how he died.”
Who Else Is in ‘Elsinore’
Simon Stone directed from a script by Stephen Beresford. Olivia Colman plays Margaret Johnson, the doctor treating Charleson. “She was a hero, as were all the families, nurses, other doctors and friends who refused to be poisoned by the paranoia,” Colman told Reuters.
Billie Piper, Johnny Flynn as director Richard Eyre, Juliet Stevenson and Peter Mullan as Charleson’s father are in it too. David Dawson plays Derek Jarman.
‘Elsinore’ Reviews: Scott Wins, the Movie Splits Critics
The performance is getting the love. Screen Daily said “Andrew Scott triumphs as Ian Charleson” and called the film “sharp and stirring but never sentimental.” Not everyone bought the rest. The Film Stage called it “overwrought, shoddily constructed awards bait.”
For screening locations as the release expands, check Focus Features.
Related: Andrew Scott on the joy of being gay
