Elsinore review: Andrew Scott is devastating in a once-in-a-lifetime part

Andrew Scott delivers a heart-shattering turn in Elsinore, a life-affirming film about death that brings tears to the eyes. After Scott’s powerful turn in Andrew Haigh’s All of Us Strangers was bafflingly overlooked at the Oscars back in 2024, this feels like – finally – his time.

The character of real-life actor Ian Charleson, who took on the role of Hamlet for the National Theatre back in 1989 just weeks before he died, feels like one of those once-in-a-lifetime parts. Scott relishes the challenge, scaling a mountain that draws on every ounce of his soul.

Directed by Simon Stone (The Daughter), the film reunites Scott with screenwriter Stephen Beresford, who previous penned the Scott-starring 2014 drama Pride. This is another LGBTQ+ themed story, again seasoned with the same wit and compassion.

Set in the midst of the AIDS epidemic in the late 1980s, it begins not with Charleson, but with Daniel Day-Lewis, the famed actor who famously froze on stage during a performance of Hamlet, before exiting stage left, never to return. It was, as the headline in the newspaper that Charleson reads, a “mystery”.

We never even see Day-Lewis’s face, bar a poster advertising the play, but he’s a ghost-like presence for a while in Elsinore, haunting Charleson, who admits he’s jealous of his fellow actor getting to play the part of Shakespeare’s Prince of Denmark.

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Born in Scotland, Charleson’s biggest success came at the beginning of the 1980s, featuring in Chariots of Fire – to the point where everyone from taxi drivers to TV presenters frequently bring it up. By 1986, Charleson, who was gay, was diagnosed with HIV – something he kept secret from all but his closest friends.

With Day-Lewis gone from the production, director Richard Eyre (a comforting Johnny Flynn) decides to recast – and he wants Charleson to play Hamlet, the part all actors dream of playing.

Yet just as Charleson accepts, his HIV virus becomes full-blown AIDS. Lesions begins to develop on his skin, as his immune system weakens. But Charleson is desperate to continue, even if it means driving himself into the ground. “I’d rather die of Hamlet than AIDS,” he quips, at one point.

Looking after him is Dr Margaret Johnson (Olivia Colman), a pioneer in the field who helped set up the first open-access HIV clinic. Her concern is his health, not his desire to tread the boards, and theirs is one of the film’s most fractious (but fun to watch) relationships.

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As Charleson rehearses, even reciting lines on the rooftop of the National, so the resonance of the play hits hard. “It’s about being alive,” says Eyre – a prophetic comment as Charleson learns to live in his final weeks.

While Scott (who played Hamlet on stage himself back in 2017) drives the film, Elsinore comes with a wealth of supporting talent. Peter Mullan as Charleson’s tear-strewn father; Monica Dolan as the pithy guardian of the NT’s stage door; Heartstopper’s Joe Locke as a fellow AIDS patient; Billie Piper as casting director – and bestie – Patsy Pollock; Matthew Beard as Charleson’s carer, director Sean Mathias; Juliet Stevenson as Hamlet cast member Sylvia Sims; and David Dawson (My Policeman), quite brilliant as filmmaker – and fellow AIDS victim – Derek Jarman.

It’s Dawson’s scenes with Scott that are among the most powerful; Jarman gave Charleson his first role in Jubilee, and he implores the actor to go public with his diagnosis, if only to help the world understand something of this horrifying disease that took so many lives.

Charleson refuses, afraid that his illness will overshadow his work. “I won’t be a victim,” he says. As the film builds to a stunning crescendo, thanks to crafty editing by Valerio Bonelli and a swelling score by Stefan Gregory, Charleson shows us, as Hamlet once said, what a piece of work is a man.

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Elsinore is released in UK cinemas on Friday 29 January 2027.

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