Bernhardt/Hamlet

C

Roundabout Theatre Company is to be congratulated for commissioning a new play for Broadway by an established playwright starring a superb actor in a lavish production. That being said, I only wish the results had turned out better. Theresa Rebeck (Seminar, Mauritius) has taken a critical moment from the long career of the famous Sarah Bernhardt, added a fashionable dash of female empowerment, and embroidered actual events with a few liberties to pique interest. This would be fine if the play were more involving and coherent. Perhaps if I were a student of theatrical history and/or an avid Shakespearean, I might have found it more gripping. At the age of 55, Bernhardt (the charismatic Janet McTeer; Les Liaisons Dangereuses, God of Carnage) was tired of playing dying courtesans and thought taking on Hamlet might be the box office success she needed to fill her expensive new theater. Her last play, by the promising Edmond Rostand (Jason Butler Harner; The Crucible, Cock), although a critical success, had been a commercial disaster. Constant Coquelin (a droll Dylan Baker; The Front Page, Mauritius) is a veteran member of her company. Louis — for some reason, he doesn’t get a last name — (Tony Carlin; Pygmalion, Junk) is a pompous critic. Alphonse Mucha (Matthew Saldivar; Saint Joan, Junk) is the artist who created posters for all Bernhardt’s plays. We also meet three members of Bernhardt’s company, played by Brittany Bradford, Triney Sandoval and Aaron Costa Ganis. Rebeck’s conceit is that Rostand, although over 20 years her junior and married with young children, is her current lover. Furthermore, she asks him to rewrite Hamlet to remove the poetry and make Hamlet a more dynamic character. (She actually did commission a revision to her specifications, but not by Rostand.) Unable to say no to her, Rostand accepts the job, which requires him to neglect his own play in progress. Her request is the curtain line of the long, turgid first act. In the livelier but unfocused second act, we meet Bernhardt’s adult son Maurice (Nick Westrate; Casa Valentina, Tribes), who returns home from university suddenly to see what is rotten in Paris, and Rostand’s clever wife Rosamond (Ito Aghayere; Junk, Mlima’s Tale) who confronts Bernhardt over the affair. The Hamlet production seems to get lost. Instead of seeing Bernhardt’s Hamlet, we instead get a scene from the play Rostand had suspended work on, Cyrano de Bergerac, with Coquelin playing the career-making title role. The final scene has a clever coup de théatre that unfortunately offers too little too late. McTeer makes a convincing Bernhardt, but when she portrays Hamlet, her speech becomes too quiet and rapid. The impressive revolving set by Beowulf Boritt (Act One, Come from Away) captures the theater’s backstage, Bernhardt’s ornate dressing room and a few other locations. Toni-Leslie James’s (Come from Away, Jitney) period costumes are excellent. The pace set by Moritz von Stuelpnagel’s (Hand to God, Verité) direction often seems rushed. All in all, it was a disappointment. Running time: two hours 30 minutes including intermission.