Last week I caught the last performance in Thames Ditton of the touring one-woman show ‘C’est La Vie: Sarah Bernhardt and Me’, and what a treat it was. Written and performed by Hilary Tones, the play opens wtih an apprehensive actress heading to audition for the role of the 19th-century French celebrity. ‘Hilary’ frets over exactly what will be required beyond a recitation from one of Bernhardt’s great speeches; some directors like you to have researched the subject in depth, others want you as a blank canvas for their ideas. The actress has played safe and investigated Bernhardt’s extraordinary career. With a few effortless costume changes, ‘Hilary’ transforms before our eyes into the flashing-eyed superstar, giving full rein to her many roles, scandals and wild personality.
Deceptively light, the play also touches on the changes in performance style (no doubt we’d find SB unbearably mannered now), while stressing that Bernhardt’s own writings on acting still hold up today. Why, Tones asks, are male writers on theatrical craft such as Stanislavsky studied and feted, while Bernhardt is overlooked? The play also wryly reflects on the ‘plus ca change’ principle; auditions are terrifying; Sarah got her first big break through nepotism; actors only ever remember the negative words in reviews.
The show is ingeniously staged; back projection shows the backs of houses whizzing past as ‘Hilary’ sits on the tube; there’s a constant flow of dazzling images of Sarah, a global celebrity whose looks could sell almost anything via print advertisements. Sometimes Tones changes before our eyes into one of Sarah’s many personae, shrugging on a jacket or peeling off a gown; other times the screen enables a quick dash backstage for another transformation, most spectacularly into a huge hooped crinoline. For a little show it feels surprisingly lavish, helped by costumes, props and the constant interplay between screen and stage, text and speech. Bernhardt’s celebrated ‘voix d’or’ was so mellifluous that even those who didn’t understand French were enraptured by its beauty. Impressively, Tones delivers many of the great speeches in flawless French. There are lovely juxtapositions: a photograph of Eleonora Duse in a preposterous costume and with a ferocious glare gets a laugh when Sarah comments on the naturalness of her great rival’s acting style.
Bernhardt’s epic career and tangled personal life is too vast for a 90-minute show, but there are ingenious compressions in the staging, such as the violent feud with a disrespectful colleague which is presented as a silent movie. A raging Sarah threatens the young woman with a horsewhip, lips working furiously in a long tirade, represented with a one-word title card: ‘Traitresse!’ As befits a family affair – director Sam Parks is Tones’ husband – the cowering colleague is played by their daughter Freya, also an actress.
As a teenager keen on the stage, I too was obsessed with Sarah Bernhardt, reading biographies and poring over photographs. Hilary Tones has done full justice to her amazing life story both in the show’s clever construction and her commanding central performance. I hope this isn’t the last we’ve seen of the Divine Sarah.