REVIEW

BERHARDT/HAMLET (MTC)

BY ALEX FIRST

We are in Paris in 1899. Take the best actor in the world, in this case a middleaged woman with a particularly healthy ego that is constantly being stoked.

Her last stage role was a critical success but failed to sell tickets.

This is a woman who doesn’t hold back – who always speaks her mind.

She spends what she wants to spend when she wants to spend it, even though she claims she is now penniless.

Even though she appears to be universally lauded – or at least she is told that she is – she decides to take a very dangerous step.

She will step into the role of Shakespeare’s Hamlet at a time when this – a woman filling a man’s role – was simply not done.

With that comes a surfeit of insecurities.

It is worth noting that she is in her mid 50s and the Prince of Denmark was but 19 years of age.

Still, she presses on.

That also involves imploring a highly regarded playwright, who is married with two young children, to rewrite Hamlet and remove the poetry in the work.

Why? Because she doesn’t like it.

As he can’t say no to her – his muse as well as his lover – he proceeds, but struggles.

Also, struggling to create an appropriate poster of her for the