In Sarah's Shadow

Or: Remember Me

A dance performance with occasional dialog meets PBSesque bio-pic, Olivia Lilley’s story of Eleonora Duse (Dylan Rodriguez-Miller) proves both a deeply touching narrative and a fascinating theatrical experiment. One of the greatest actors of her time (if George Bernard Shaw is to be believed she could blush unconsciously on-cue) Duse is mostly forgotten today because she had the misfortune of fighting for the same spotlight with a thespian by the name of Sarah Bernhardt (Daiva Bhandari). While Bernhardt shaped and molded herself onstage and off to become everyone’s idea of a star, Duse remained uncompromising, loyal to her own self. unimpressed with the fame game and devoted soul to her art, she became a celebrated performer on two continents, and found success as a director and producer to boot, but too often saw her professional, and personal works come crashing down.

Devised by Lilley and the cast and choreographed by Kelly Anderson Williamson, the show provides us with a curiously interactive puzzle in following the action. Lilley’s scenes are nothing to sneeze at; of particular note is Duse at leisure and her lover and pet playwright Gabriele D’Annunzio (Nick Benz) narrating her thoughts, much to her annoyance; or the first meeting between Duse and her soon to be collaborator and lover Isadora Duncan (Mary Iris Loncto). But it’s in the abstracted language of dance that tickles us to shift and twist and not merely experience.

Sometimes the medium is amusingly straightforward, such as when Duse does a tour of the united states, land of the gun and firework. Structured as it is like an American Experience feature, right down to the title, we careen through years, vast periods Other times it revels into meta-theatrical as a young Duse watches her mother die in tragedy onstage, die by degrees offstage by consumption and then imitates and summons both versions in her performance as Romeo AND Juliet in order to keep death away from her family. Sometimes it’s a small easter egg like the fact that Bernhardt lost a leg in later life: no one’s drawing attention to it, but it’s there if you know where to look.

And it also stands in for an analog for acting. There is so much that can be conveyed of a character, of the tenor of a performance through dance. We see Bhandari capture the essence of Bernhardt’s legendary Hamlet, the fiery-eyed and martial energy, without having to speak a line. Or see Loncto melt into Duncan’s fantastic shapes celebrating liberty and wild expression. And Dusa herself, transforming herself into another character (helped with the transcendental lighting of David Goodman and “Weight in Gold” by Gallant.)

Rodriguez-Miller herself earnestly slides into her subjects' skin. Ranging from buoyantly earnest (picking up speed as she begins to speak on her theories of acting and theater management), to a fierce and Orson Wellian swagger (taking the world on to the tune of “Centuries” by Fall Down Boy), to stingily proud, to hurriedly hiding herself from Bernhardt behind a Cousin Itt curtain of hair. We meet Duse at her best and her worst, and Rodriguez-Miller goes far to emulate what would have made the great actress so radical for her time and so captivating in ours.

In a show full of simple elegance there is one moment that nails into the heart. As Duncan and Duse work through a tragedy, both women guide each other through dance, both using and embodying the art so important to them both. It’s a deeply intent moment between Loncto and Rodriguez-Miller and that holds the key to Lilley’s seed of this story: that art survives, not only remembered by its merits but by the soul put into it. It is through that sense, the human story about a word, a blush, a placing of a foot, that will make those like Eleonora life forever.