Bernhardt/Hamlet

Or: Put on the Red Light

Imagine you are walking in the field. The air is crisp, the colors vividly autumnal, the way curving ahead in spite of you then WHAM you step on the head of a rake and are bashed in the face by the rising handle you should have seen all a long. In the most pleasant way possible, of course. That exact feeling comes along in the middle of the second act of Theresa Rebeck’s Bernhardt/Hamlet, already an engaging, simulating question on art, feminism, and identity, full of laughs and weighty thoughts jeweled in cunning lines. But that discovery, lead up to so gracefully, doesn’t even hurt until you see the handle of the stiletto poking out of your ribs.

Sarah Bernhardt (Marissa Price), the greatest actress of the 19th Century, sits at the heart of Paris. She is surrounded by admirers, is muse and lover to the handsome young playwright Edmond Rostand (Brain Telestai) and is deathly afraid of losing her grasp of divinity. So, ever the dreamer of impossible dreams she sets her sights on playing Hamlet, the greatest role for the greatest artist, leaping into britches, battling iambs, and generally shocking all of society (including her squeeze). Rebeck jumps in to the Devine Sarah in media res, grappling with Hamlet, the actress of boundless energy meeting the immovable Danish prince. The lines are crisp, the laughs warm, the characters large as life, and director Buffie Main follows close to mach this relentless play sets.

Granted early on some of the scenes amble when they should prowl, and some of the airy Frenchness of the lines fail to volly quite as far as they should. Price shows pulls of the magnetism of Berhanrdt’s performance, still and steely eyed on stage and debonair in her salon, but her own powers shine best when peeling back the steel skin of the celebrity, as with her co-star Lysette (Kelly Barker) or her son Maurice (Andres Maldonado), where she is given human comfort and can let her fears and frustrations show in a shower of petals. Commiserating with her port irate painter Alphonse (Stitch Marker, beaming with good will and poeticisms) and canoodling with Edmund (Telestai’s fretful adoration nurtures a sweet affection between them, shown in glimpses rather than performance rays), Price feels most at home, most commanding.

She plays especially well with Constant (Chris Canfield) a veteran hamlet now serving as her Polonius. Canfield plays well with her, going from the bombast of a 19th century style to the intimate and heartfelt style Sarah prefers and engenders. By crouching at the back of her struggles, and meeting her halfway on script, Constant does much to spread the spell of Sarah’s performance. “I’ve played this part four times.” He says in wonder at one point, “And I’ve never thought of that.” “Brilliance only depends on who’s pointing the light.”

But even greater than Bernhardts story is Rebeck’s script, which manages to be both titilating biography and well balanced social argument. Everyone comes to Hamlet (and Berhandrt’s playing of him) with a different argument and not one is weighted more heavily against the others (except the simpering critic Louis (Alaggio Farino) who’s just there to scatter pigeons). It’s heavy mental exercise, a long jog the playwright has picked out through sumptuous terrain, rounding us to various Sansui of views both sublime and terrible. Most of the later comes from the casual misogamy from even the most supportive and well meaning of her cohort. Rather than heavy handed villainy, Rebeck seeds it about like a pernicious weed, like smelling excrement in the rose water, but underscores Bernhardt’s quest throughout the entire play. She doesn’t even like Hamlet, or Shakespeare, but wants to carve herself into immortality, to harness power and prestige and freedom that has always eluded her as a woman, no matter her fame. She wants to be listened to, not simply adored. And its from that craving, the want that not even her dearest can grant her, that the sudden twist comes, right where you should have seen it all along.