Why This Tony Nominee Is Doing Shakespeare Badly on Purpose
Performers
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Bernhardt/Hamlet stars Tony winner Janet McTeer as legendary French stage actress Sarah Bernhardt as she preps to play the moody Danish Prince in a make-or-break production. Critics, some colleagues and even her own son think she’s mad as Hamlet to do it. But Coquelin, her costar and confidant, believes in her.
The play, which is currently running at Roundabout’s American Airlines Theatre, is based on history — Bernhardt famously tackled the role of Hamlet numerous times, and Coquelin was her frequent collaborator. However, Bernhardt/Hamlet is no staid docudrama. It’s a love letter to the art (and anguish) of making art, and a vibrant portrait of a proto-feminist who lived by her own rules.
But Bernhardt/Hamlet affords him an unprecedented opportunity to show off his formidable range. As Coquelin, he goes from buffoon (the guy’s such a ham, his costars mock him mercilessly) to brilliant when Bernhardt helps him unlock the pathos in the scene between Hamlet and the Ghost of his dead father. Toward the end, he delivers a powerful speech as Cyrano, a role Coquelin originated in 1897.
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To create the character of Coquelin, Baker didn’t get too caught up in what the real-life man was like. “I read his book — more of a pamphlet, really — on Art and the Actor, which is just hilarious — it has some ideas that just wouldn’t fly very well today,” he says. “And our director, Moritz von Stuelpnagel, sent me some biographies of Bernhardt where there’s talk about Coquelin. But you know, I took some liberties. What I love about the part is being able to connect with the guy that I see when I go into the Actors’ Equity Lounge or any kind of cattle-call audition, that fellow who hasn’t gotten a break and may now get it. He thinks if he can just get that call, it can change his life. I think it’s in the heart of every single actor out there that they think that call is coming.”
Baker adds that he also used “really bad community theatre” as an inspiration for Coquelin’s initial soliloquy as the Ghost, which is ridiculously overblown. “There’s nothing more beautiful to me than seeing somebody fail at doing something, but their heart is pure they’re doing their best,” Baker says. “When Coquelin catches the other actors goofing on him, he doesn’t get it. The last thought in his mind is that they’re making fun of him, because he’s great! But then Sarah asks him to try and connect with something deep within him, and it leads to all those feelings. So it’s a bit of a revelation for him. I can tell you personally, when my father passed back in 1983 while I was in drama school, I immediately picked stuff from Hamlet because I knew I had emotional work to do. Hamlet is the guy you go to if you want to connect with a father.”
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Top image: Dylan Baker and Janet McTeer in Bernhardt/Hamlet. Photos by Joan Marcus.
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