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.

Mlima's Tale

B-

This new work by two-time Pulitzer winner Lynn Nottage (Ruined, Sweat), now at The Public Theater, is a moral tale about the illicit ivory trade. If you have been hiding under a rock, you might not know that poachers are still killing elephants for their tusks even though the ivory trade has been outlawed. Ms. Nottage traces the path from the brutal killing of Mlima, one of Kenya’s oldest and largest elephants, to the unveiling of the art work created from his tusks at a rich collector’s penthouse. Along the way, we meet the greedy and corrupt people who fund the poachers, bribe the police, shipping company and customs officials; commission the art and carve the ivory with pretended concern for its  source. All these people are played by three fine actors — Kevin Mambo (The Fortress of Solitude), Jojo Gonzalez (Small Mouth Sounds) and Ito Aghayere (Junk, Familiar). Occasionally  I became confused about who they were playing at any given moment. The fact that the first roles played by Ms. Aghayere are men compounded my confusion. Ms. Nottage attempts with intermittent success to give the characters enough individuality to keep them from seeming just cogs in a machine. Her most stunning creation is Mlima, charismatically portrayed by Sahr Ngaujah (Fela!, Master Harold and the Boys) more by movement than by words. Mlima is a witness to the action who daubs each character with white paint as each becomes a guilty participant. Perhaps this marks them for future haunting or punishment; they receive none here. The spare set design by Riccardo Hernandez (Miss You Like Hell, Indecent), expressively lit by Lap Chi Chu, avoids distraction. Between scenes, texts that I assume are African maxims, are projected. Jennifer Moeller’s (Sweat, Cardinal) costumes are a big help in identifying the characters. Musician Justin Hicks plays the drums and occasionally sings evocatively. Jo Bonney (Father Comes Home from the War) directs with great fluidity. It’s all admirable, but a bit remote and didactic, unlike previous plays by Ms. Nottage that I have enjoyed. Running time: one hour 20 minutes, no intermission.

Familiar ***

This lively, overstuffed new play by Danai Gurira (Eclipsed) now in previews at Playwrights Horizons runs the gamut from sitcom to high drama in its two plus hours. The action takes place in real time late in the afternoon before the rehearsal dinner for the wedding of the Chinyamwira family’s 34-year-old daughter Tendi (Roslyn Ruff). Tendi and her Caucasian fiancé Chris (Joby Earle) are members of a charismatic Christian church who have vowed premarital abstinence. Tendi’s parents Donald (Harold Surratt), a successful attorney, and Marvelous (Tamara Tunie), a scientist/professor who has assimilated to American ways with a vengeance, left Zimbabwe over 30 years ago and are living the good life in a suburb of Minneapolis. Clint Ramos’s finely detailed two-level set presents a house worthy of a home design magazine, sure to evoke real estate envy in the heart of every New Yorker. Tendi’s younger sister, Nyasha (Ito Aghayere), a singer/songwriter/feng shui consultant based in New York has just returned from a trip to Zimbabwe to get in touch with her roots, but her family doesn't express much interest in her trip. Margaret (Melanie Nichols-King), Marvelous’s depressed younger sister with a drinking problem might well have wandered in from a production of “A Delicate Balance.” A crisis develops when Marvelous’s elder sister Anne (Myra Lucretia Taylor) arrives unexpectedly from Zimbabwe, determined to perform roora, an ancient bridal price ritual, over the strenuous objection of Marvelous. Sibling rivalry is strong in both generations of sisters. When he learns that the roora ceremony requires the groom to have an intermediary, Chris hurriedly recruits his slacker younger brother Brad (Joe Tippett), with hilarious results. During the second act, the mood gradually darkens and the revelation of a shocking family secret changes everything. The play’s many extremely funny moments make the darkward turn all the more unsettling. Director Rebecca Taichman has nimbly steered the actors through the change of tone. The strong ensemble acting succeeds in making the specific seem universal. Susan Hilferty's costumes contribute greatly to the production. The humanity and good humor went a long way toward making me willing to overlook some of the holes in the plot. It’s far from perfect, but well worth seeing. Running time: 2 hours 15 minutes including intermission.