Bard + Bernhardt= Broadway! Janet McTeer & Company Celebrate Opening Night of BERNHARDT/HAMLET

hello I'm Richard Ridge for Broadway World Tony Award winner Janet mctier has returned to Broadway alongside Jason Butler Harner and Dylan Baker in Teresa rebeck's new play burnhard Hamlet and we're here on opening night to celebrate with the [Music] company it's about someone from another time but it was so modern well that's what's amazing about um Teresa is that she's taken on on of of Once Upon a Time and spoken through her to all the things that are relevant today and uh was still somehow managing to make it amusing and clever and uh insightful and then slightly shocking it's she's just she's such a clever playright it's extraordinary I thought I knew everything about Sarah birdart I mean I'm a theater nerd until I came to this and I was like wow there's so much to learn from this what amazed you the most when you were working on this do you know what amazed me most was the fact that there were biographies and um written about her where they and people have all these views about her and they seem to all seemed to forget about how terrified she got she suffered from terrible stage fright and that to me was and and she had no family I mean she did but you know they didn't love her they didn't care about her and I just thought there's a person and she came from nothing and turned herself into this s that's somebody who has an extraordinary force of character combined with an absolute lack of original love and what do those two where do those two things take you and what do they turn what what do they what do they turn up how do they form a person I don't know whether I'm doing it but I I I do hope I I'm I hope she's smiling somewhere she might not but she I hope she is the idea that we're trying I'm trying to show her heart and her how much she cared and loved what she did and her passion for the work women all we ever get to do is sit around and mope for love the power that's what eludes us does power elude you no no maybe that's why Hamlet's driving me mad all that privilege and he can't figure out how to do anything a woman would never have got away with it many women do nothing and who cares about them a woman who does nothing is nothing a man who does nothing is Hamlet well it's really interesting it's such a lovely company and it's been uh done so well by the director of morit fenagel and Teresa rebeck with her ability to write and change things and make it work that uh it's been it's been glorious really and and it's also exciting because I don't think people have any idea what they're going to see and it's sort of like a modernday period piece and I think uh a lot of people are in for a real thrill what is it like sharing first the rehearsal room and then sharing this stage with Janet vict well Janet and I met on Ozark which was incredible but we just had two scenes she's the most um loving playful joyful astute um actress that I have experienced in a very very long time I mean she's phenomenal she's so alive every part of her every atom every finger every toe and so to act opposite that is just heaven and in the rehearsal room it's a new play it required work it required finessing it required like fine-tuning and then once an audience came we did so much and trying to get to the meat of what the play is about with the many different gorgeous ideas that Theresa has given us has been a real pleasure a real pleasure like really one of the highlights of my career without out period I am perfectly suited to play Hamlet no one cares about his masculinity soal they care about the Magnificent Nuance of his heart yes and his passion and his Joy his Joy he's the most miserable and melancholic of men no one is going to come to the theater to see me play a depressed melancholic boy oh he's not a boy oh I am not going to argue with you about how old he is because I'm right he is a a passionate confused youth with the Mind of a man of 40 a young actor of what um 20 cannot understand the philosophy of Hamlet and an older actor no longer looks the part and nor has he the ready heart of the woman who can combine the light Carriage of Youth with the mature thought of a man a woman more readily looks the part feels the part and has the suppleness of mind to grasp it yes you know I it was about 10 years ago that I started thinking about it I don't know I I don't know where ideas come from you know the Muse kind of shows up and when I thought first thought about writing about Sarah Bernhard doing Hamlet I thought why is it so controversial you know the very simple questions that arise from an event like that you know when the men played the women for so long and when she did it she was the most famous person in the world and um and it caused a a real Ruckus you know there's real controversy and I so I thought I think there are a lot of very fascinating questions around that historical moment that you know could be pulled out of the ether around it I the first time I read this I was so excited by um the conversation that Teresa wanted to have about representation on stage about what does it mean for uh a woman to be on stage what is is a woman's tragedy the same as a man's tragedy can we take them uh uh in in the same breath and and as seriously as one another and that to me felt really vibrant and exciting and something to fight for and something to discuss and frankly with everything that's happening in the news this week it's exactly what we should be talking about which obviously we couldn't plan or whatever but but um you know this play was really on the pulse of something that felt really vibrant and valuable to me to several other people and we were excited about that [Music]