'Elsinore' trailer: Andrew Scott plays Ian Charleson, who fought to play Hamlet at the National Theatre in 1989 while battling HIV. Nov. 20.

The new trailer for "Elsinore" asks an old question with fresh urgency: what does it cost to play Hamlet when the lines about death are no longer make-believe? IndieWire reports on the trailer for Simon Stone's fact-based drama, in which Andrew Scott plays Ian Charleson, the "Chariots of Fire" star who, back in 1989, fought to play Hamlet at the National Theatre, his lifelong dream, while fighting complications from HIV. Scott has played Hamlet more than any other character, once doing a three-hour-and-50-minute version eight times a week. "Once you play that part, everything else is a walk in the park," he said. The hard part, he told IndieWire's Anne Thompson at the Telluride Film Festival, was setting aside his own interpretation to imagine what the role meant to Charleson. "That was difficult to unlearn," he said. The cast also includes Olivia Colman, Billie Piper, Johnny Flynn, Juliet Stevenson and Peter Mullan, and Focus Features will release the film in theaters on Friday, Nov. 20. Here is the lesson. We tend to treat Shakespeare as homework, and this trailer is a reminder that his plays were written to be lived through. The famous question, "to be or not to be," is not a riddle for a quiz; it is a man deciding whether to keep going. An actor who took that stage knowing his own time might be short gives the speech a weight no footnote can. This is a story about work, courage and finishing what you started, and that is worth a ticket. What I'd Assign: "Hamlet," of course. Read Act 3, Scene 1 out loud before you go. Your ticket is a ballot, and this one is a vote for grown-up storytelling.