What Is BERNHARDT/HAMLET All About? Janet McTeer & Company Explain!

hello I'm Richard Ridge for Broadway World Tony Award winner Janet mctier is returning to Broadway alongside Dylan Baker and Jason Butler Horner in Teresa rebeck's new play burnhard Hamlet performances begin on August 31st and we drop by the American Airlines theater to meet the company it's just to hear it it's so alive it's so the thing that makes it quite difficult is uh in many ways in week two of rehearsal is that it's incredibly fast you know they speak they're all very bright they're all very intelligent they're all very quick so learning your lines to be that quick and you know you have to really be on top of it so where you know so it's it's uh she's Teresa is just so clever and they are clever she's written a woman who is clever she was clever in her time she was cl she had a clearly she was a very intelligent woman she was a dramatic woman she was an interesting woman she was a funny woman she was a witty woman she was uh and a really great actress so um to sort of try and get all of those elements in somewhere I was a little obsessed with alfons Muka and so I went and I went was at the Muka Museum and I saw the series of posters that he did with her and uh and one of them was of her as Hamlet and I had known that she had done that you know I thought oh yeah Sarah burnhard did Hamlet and there was something about that moment where I thought I I think there's a play there and then I thought about it for about 10 years I didn't move on it right away and I had had to I did a lot of reading um and you know I went and saw pictures of her and uh and uh and because I think I was afraid of how do you enter it it took me a long time to figure out because I didn't want it just to be a biopic you know I wanted it to be more an exploration also of what is Hamlet what does it mean to take on Hamlet um for anybody I play kostan kokan who was a french actor mostly character actor hm how could I mostly funny roles how can I relate to that I don't know but uh he was on the periphery but he had played Hamlet several times in the regions and so uh they were good friends Sarah burnhard relied on Klan to help her out with interpretation with uh staging the play and she is the theater manager so she's directing it she's she's got a million hats on and she really relies on cand to be there for her and also to play ponus and The Ghost and her relationship with her father was already so bizarre seeing it she didn't know who he was and in the play if you've got Daddy Issues Hamlet's a good play to work them out so uh playing the ghost to her Hamlet is really interesting I'm really happy to be back I mean there's no place I want to be any more than doing a play on Bradway it really makes me so happy and touches my heart so I'm so happy to be back what a way to return tell me about the play who do you play I play Edmond rans who wrote sio de bersak he wrote a bunch of other plays that we don't tend to know but there sio is his crowning Jewel you know and he was this amazing poet uh in this play he's in love with uh Sarah burnhard which is easy to be in love with Janet mctier and um he's married and uh and they're creating plays together and finding love and dealing with love and some other things happen we're having an absolutely incredible time you know to take a story about one of the world's uh most famous actresses Sarah burnhard who was at the peak of her career in the late 19th century taking on one of the most challenging roles in the dramatic Cannon Hamlet and what does it mean for a woman's you know to see a woman's tragedy versus a man's tragedy and what does that mean about how we see men and women and whether her Ambitions can be realized in the same way feels vibrant and exciting and fresh and uh really complicated in this beautiful way but also funny to see this play struggling to come together and these people who love each other dearly and the romance of it in a very Lush Paris at the fantas it's like it it feels like a very beautiful um story to tell