Saved articles

You have not yet added any article to your bookmarks!

Log in

Don't have an account yet? Sign up

Create an account

Already have an account? Log in

Login Reminder

Remember your password? Log in

Terms of use

ATTENTION: This legal notice applies to the entire contents of the Website under the domain name broadwaybaby.com (Website) and to any correspondence by e-mail between us and you. Please read these terms carefully before using the Website. Using the Website indicates that you accept these terms regardless of whether or not you choose to register with us. If you do not accept these terms, do not use the Website. This notice is issued by the publishers of Broadway Baby ("the Company").

1.1 - By accessing any part of the Website, you shall be deemed to have accepted this legal notice in full. If you do not accept this legal notice in full, you must leave the Website immediately.
1.2 - The Company may revise this legal notice at any time by updating this posting. You should check the Website from time to time to review the then current legal notice, because it is binding on you. Certain provisions of this legal notice may be superseded by expressly designated legal notices or terms located on particular pages at the Website.

2.1 - You are permitted to print and download extracts from the Website for your own use on the following basis:
(a) no documents or related graphics on the Website are modified in any way
(b) no graphics on the Website are used separately from the corresponding text
(c) the Company's copyright and trade mark notices and this permission notice appear in all copies.
(d) you do not abuse the Company's database rights by re-creating a local copy of our data in any part.

2.2 - Unless otherwise stated, the copyright and other intellectual property rights in all material on the Website (excluding promotional images of shows provided by their producers) are owned by the Company or its licensors. For the purposes of this legal notice, any use of extracts from the Website other than in accordance with clause 2.1 for any purpose is prohibited. If you breach any of the terms in this legal notice, your permission to use the Website automatically terminates and you must immediately destroy any downloaded or printed extracts from the Website.

2.3 - Subject to clause 2.1, no part of the Website may be reproduced or stored in any other website or included in any public or private electronic retrieval system or service without the Company's prior written permission.

2.4 - Any rights not expressly granted in these terms are reserved.

3.1 - While the Company endeavours to ensure that the Website is normally available 24 hours a day, the Company shall not be liable if for any reason the Website is unavailable at any time or for any period.

3.2 - Access to the Website may be suspended temporarily and without notice in the case of system failure, maintenance or repair or for reasons beyond the Company's control.

4.1 - Any comment you post to the Website shall be considered non-confidential and non-proprietary. The Company shall have no obligations with respect to such material. The Company and its designees shall be free to copy, disclose, distribute, incorporate and otherwise use such material and all data, images, sounds, text and other things embodied therein for any and all commercial or non-commercial purposes.

4.2 - You are not permitted to use the commenting system to engage in ad hominem attacks on a Broadway Baby writer or use 'sock puppet' accounts to support an argument. You are welcome to use the commenting system to submit your own opinion about a show, but it is not provided as a platform to criticise the Company or its staff.

4.3 - You are prohibited from posting or transmitting to or from the Website any material:
(a) that is threatening, defamatory, obscene, indecent, seditious, offensive, pornographic, abusive, liable to incite racial hatred, discriminatory, menacing, scandalous, inflammatory, blasphemous, in breach of confidence, in breach of privacy or which may cause annoyance or inconvenience; or
(b) for which you have not obtained all necessary licences and/or approvals; or
(c) which constitutes or encourages conduct that would be considered a criminal offence, give rise to civil liability, or otherwise be contrary to the law of or infringe the rights of any third party, in any country in the world; or
(d) which is technically harmful (including, without limitation, computer viruses, logic bombs, Trojan horses, worms, harmful components, corrupted data or other malicious software or harmful data).

4.4 - All listing data on the Website including images and text is the sole responsibility of the person(s) or company who originated such content and we take no responsibility for any content contained therein.

4.5 - You may not misuse the Website (including, without limitation, by hacking or screen scraping).

4.6 - The Company shall fully co-operate with any law enforcement authorities or court order requesting or directing the Company to disclose the identity or locate anyone posting any material in breach of clause 4.2 or clause 4.3.

4.7 - Images for all listings on this site have either been supplied to us under clause 4.3(b) & 4.4 or via a festival data feed such as EdFringe.com which has similar terms, and as such all claims for unauthorised use should be directed to the company or person(s) who created the original listing.

5.1 - Links to third party websites on the Website are provided solely for your convenience. If you use these links, you leave the Website. The Company has not reviewed all of these third party websites and does not control and is not responsible for these websites or their content or availability. The Company therefore does not endorse or make any representations about them, or any material found there, or any results that may be obtained from using them. If you decide to access any of the third party websites linked to the Website, you do so entirely at your own risk.

5.2 - If you would like to link to the Website, you may only do so subject to the following conditions:
(a) you do not remove, distort or otherwise alter the size or appearance of the logo of Broadway Baby;
(b) you do not create a frame or any other browser or border environment around the Website;
(c) you do not misrepresent your relationship with the Company nor present any other false information about the Company;
(d) your website does not contain content that is distasteful, offensive or controversial, infringes any intellectual property rights or other rights of any other person or otherwise does not comply with all applicable laws and regulations.

5.3 - The Company expressly reserves the right to revoke the right granted in clause 5.2 for breach of these terms and to take any action it deems appropriate.

5.4 - You shall fully indemnify the Company for any loss or damage suffered by the Company or any of its group companies for breach of clause 5.2.

6.1 - Each registration is for a single user only. The Company does not permit you to share your user name and password with any other person nor with multiple users on a network.

6.2 - Responsibility for the security of any passwords issued rests with you.

7.1 - While the Company endeavours to ensure that the information on the Website is correct, the Company does not warrant the accuracy and completeness of the material on the Website. The Company may make changes to the material on the Website, or to the listings described in it, at any time without notice. The material on the Website may be out of date, and the Company makes no commitment to update such material.

7.2 - The material on the Website is provided "as is", without any conditions, warranties or other terms of any kind. Accordingly, to the maximum extent permitted by law, the Company provides you with the Website on the basis that the Company excludes all representations, warranties, conditions and other terms (including, without limitation, the conditions implied by law of satisfactory quality, fitness for purpose and the use of reasonable care and skill) which, but for this legal notice, might have effect in relation to the Website.

8.1 - The Company, any other party (whether or not involved in creating, producing, maintaining or delivering the Website), and any of the Company's group companies and the officers, directors, employees or agents of any of them, exclude all liability and responsibility for any amount or kind of loss or damage that may result to you or a third party (including without limitation, any direct, indirect, punitive or consequential loss or damages, or any loss of income, profits, goodwill, data, contracts, use of money, or loss or damages arising from or connected in any way to business interruption, and whether in tort (including without limitation negligence), contract or otherwise) in connection with the Website in any way or in connection with the use, inability to use or the results of use of the Website, any websites linked to the Website or the material on such websites, including but not limited to loss or damage due to viruses that may infect your computer equipment, software, data or other property on account of your access to, use of, or browsing the Website or your downloading of any material from the Website or any websites linked to the Website.

8.2 - Nothing in this legal notice shall exclude or limit the Company's liability for:
(a) death or personal injury caused by negligence (as such term is defined by the Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977; or
(b) fraud; or
(c) misrepresentation as to a fundamental matter; or
(d) any liability which cannot be excluded or limited under applicable law.

8.3 - If your use of material on the Website results in the need for servicing, repair or correction of equipment, software or data, you assume all costs thereof.

This legal notice shall be governed by and construed in accordance with English law. Disputes arising in connection with this legal notice shall be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the English courts.

Do you agree to our terms? Sign up

Guy Masterson: My Family and Another Fringe!

I invited Guy Masterson to talk about his time at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, his famous connections and the double bill of shows about ElizabthTaylor being performed this year.

All I need is one hit play, to make my day, to make my life in every way!

Guy Masterson is the nephew of the legendary actor, film icon and hard-drinking Welshman Richard Burton (1925-1984), whom Kenneth Tynan called "the natural successor to Olivier”. While he never won an Oscar, Burton received seven nominations and was married five times: twice to Elizabeth Taylor, with whom he had a notoriously turbulent relationship. Taylor won three Oscars: two for Best Actress and the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award for her pioneering advocacy of those fighting HIV/AIDS.

I invited him to talk about his time at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, his famous connections and the double bill of shows about ElizabthTaylor being performed this year.

Two years ago you celebrated 3O consecutive years at the Edinburgh Fringe and said that you wouldn't be back. What happened?

I was really angry in 2024 about the skyrocketing costs of accommodation and the distribution of the Covid recovery grant from the Fringe Society that didn’t reach the artists, but I had committed to presenting two shows and I vowed that would be my last Fringe. I was only up in Edinburgh that year to open and close them - and once in the middle to present the Korean awards and I gave two single performances of my signature solo shows - Under Milk Wood and Animal Farm in the prestigious Pleasance EICC as a kind of sign off. I'm glad I did them and maintained my consecutive record, but I thought it was a good time to bow out.

And now you are approaching your 32nd.

Yes, but this year is very different. It started off with honouring another commitment; this time to Call Me Elizabeth, which I absolutely wanted to do because of the obvious connection and because it was another way of honouring my uncle and because of what Kayla Boye had written, which I thought led into some really interesting angles on Elizabeth's view of Richard.

He was obviously a key figure in your life.

He was only three younger than my mother. My maternal grandmother, Cis - short for Cecilia - was Richard's older sister and when their mother died, Cis and her husband Elfed took Richard in and brought him up as her son. So my mother and he grew up as brother and sister. Whenever he was in London for filming or whatever, they'd stop by to see Cis, who lived with us. And whenever Elizabeth was with him, which was during my formative years, she would come too. The Rolls would pull up outside the house and I'd go and play. Very often the paparazzi would be hanging around outside the bungalow waiting for them to emerge, and that was just how things were.

That must have been mind-blowing for a young boy with no 'showbiz' background

I grew up with all that without really understanding what it was about, because I was too young. Then, when I was nineteen I had this incredible road trip with Uncle Richard where I got to know him personally; a sort of father-and-son ‘brief shining moment’, if you like. I was close to his children too, particularly Liza and Maria. Maria used to live with us in North London when she was attending school and getting a job. Liza was Elizabeth's daughter by Michael Todd, but he died so early in her life Richard was the only father she knew. She loved and worshipped him. My sister Celia was very often invited to keep them company during the school holidays - wherever they were - Puerto Vallarta, Gstaad, Los Angeles - keeping the girls company during those critical years when Elizabeth and Richard went from enchantment to furious love to throwing plates at each other!

There was clearly no shortage of material for Kayla to draw on in Call Me Elizabeth. How did you come to be involved?

I went to see it in 2023. I was a little trepidatious, because who's going to take on playing Elizabeth Taylor? But I saw it… and Kayla was wonderful, no doubt about it.

But what I saw was effectively Part 1: from child star to meeting Richard, what we've termed From Lassie to Cleopatra. There was inevitably going to be a Part 2, so I asked Kayla if I could be involved as an advisor, given that I’d met her and might have some inside family information that could help. I know how the family felt about everything. They worshipped Richard. He was a very dear parent when he was with them, and he took his responsibilities as a father very, very seriously. The key part of the story was what happened between the second divorce and the last time Elizabeth saw him.

I was with Richard in Switzerland in 1981, and he admitted to talking to Elizabeth practically every day on the telephone. I picked him up on it; “You're always talking about her”. He said, “No I'm not”. “Yes you are! You talk about her all the time”. So I knew they both never stopped loving each other, but they also realised it was over and that Richard had moved on.

And what was it Kayla wrote that you felt was so important to get right?

She wrote a very interesting take on what happened that led Elizabeth into humanitarian work. In 1983, at Elizabeth’s instigation, they worked together in a hugely commercial production of Private Lives by Noel Coward. What had initially started as a Broadway stunt blossomed into an national tour during which Richard married Sally Hay. Sally and he eloped one weekend to Las Vegas and he had returned to the show a married man. It was the end of the Richard and Elizabeth era and, after the show closed, Elizabeth experienced a major depression tantamount to a nervous breakdown. She'd also become reliant on painkillers and sleeping pills and was drinking far too much alcohol. Not for highs; she was in great pain from her various ailments and struggling with the addictions, probably in mourning for the real end of her marriage of passion to Richard. I guess she had no real reason to carry on. Eventually her children, all four of them, staged an intervention: “This is how your sickness makes us feel”... and Elizabeth eventually chose to go to the Betty Ford Centre of her own volition, to get clean and sober.

It was around this time that the AIDS epidemic was making its mark and the Reagan government was ignoring it, calling it the “gay plague”. She was aware too that gay actors made up a large part of Hollywood at the time and they were being shunned by one of their contemporaries now President in the White House.

Elizabeth had worked very intimately with James Dean, who was to become a gay icon, Montgomery Clift, whose moher announced his homosexualtiy afetr his death - those two both dying in tragic car crashes, and Rock Hudson, who was diagnosed with AIDS in 1984. His homosexuality was known in the industry and he became one of the first celebrities to disclose his diagnosis and in 1985 the first major American celebrity to die from an AIDS-related illness. For those three to die so tragically meant so much to her. So Elizabeth used her fame - and her personal connection to him - to get through on the White House line, if you like, and shift the dial. And the rest is history. Elizabeth too became a gay icon because of it - and perhaps that was her most powerful and meaningful performance…

She was particularly affected by Rock Hudson's death

I was at Elizabeth's house in Bel Air on the day she got the news… I'd gone up to see Maria, who was in town, so I went up to the house. I didn't see Elizabeth. She didn't come down from her room. It was very sad. Very, very sad. I know she was devastated.

It's easy to forget how dreadful those times they were and the fact that the Reagan administration was pretending it wasn't happening.

And meanwhile Thatcher's government here was putting together all those horrific videos: crumbling buildings and apocalyptic messaging. It was quite atrocious. The publicity was appalling, so Elizabeth used her connections. THIS is really the premise of Part 2... Without giving too much away, the play opens and she's receiving RSVPs for her first of several “Moving the Dial” dinners she’d put together, and she's seeing responses from Michael Jackson, Frank Sinatra, various others, and notes from the Reagans all turning her down. But during the course of the hour you watch her become more and more determined to change the perception. She calls the White House. “Could I speak to the President please?” Tell him it’s Elizabeth… Yes, that Elizabeth!”

Her “sass” is one of the great things I remember about Elizabeth. I experienced it. Actually, I have a photograph from the house. Look at this. There's me holding one of her Oscars, posing with the programme for the first piece of theatre I was ever in. That's the Warhol on the wall behind me. Monet on the other wall. And there's my sister presenting me with the Oscar! I’m just 24 starting my career and holding Elizabeth’s Oscars in my hands and all the paintings around me aren't prints. They're real. Millions of pounds worth of art hanging on her walls!

And no one outside of the family has ever seen that photo?

They haven't. And here's the other thing… that first play I was in, The Wonderful World of Waiver, was a musical and by some miracle, I played the lead. The lights come up on this agitated figure in a flat cap, obviously a writer with writer's block, and he breaks into song and my opening lines are: “All I need is one hit play, to make my day, to make my life in every way!” And I guess I've lived my life that way ever since!

Richard Beck

A graduate in theology and education, Richard acted and contributed to dance, drama and music productions throughout his teaching career. He joined Broadway Baby in 2014 and is now our Editor-in-Chief. He usually disappears to warmer climes for the winter to pursue his passion for travel.

!nfectious energy, inventive choreography and remarkable vocal performances