DUET at Theatre at the Tabard

★★★

“And while the intimacy of the piece is fitting, Morgan and Straus fail to capture the richness and depth of the legendary characters”

More than a century before our Celebrity Culture took hold, the legendary actors Sarah Bernhardt and Eleonora Duse became the pioneers of superstardom. Their rivalry has been said to have changed acting forever, becoming two of the first to achieve lasting worldwide fame. George Bernard Shaw almost certainly fuelled their enmity, praising Duse for ‘the best modern acting I have ever seen’, going on to say that while Bernhardt was ‘charming, artful and clever’, Duse ‘touches you straight on the very heart’.

Their approach to their art couldn’t have been more dissimilar. Duse favoured a naturalistic and contemporary style, using the power of emotion on stage while Bernhardt adopted the method style of acting with flamboyant gestures. Yet they still shared the same passion and should have – could have – been friends. Their story is of two people who had too much in common but were as different as night and day. Otho Eskin, in his play “Duet” imagines a final meeting of the two; one month before Duse’s death and a year after Bernhardt’s.

Duse (Cynthia Straus) is in ill-health, backstage at a theatre in Pittsburgh. Alone and far from home she is about to perform, for the very last time, as Marguerite in Alexandre Dumas’ “La Dame Aux Camelias”. A role she has played many times before, and one which Bernhardt made famous. Threatening to cancel the performance she sends the theatre manager away so she can be left with her own reflections. Only it isn’t herself she sees, but the ghost of Bernhardt (Wendy Morgan) who wanders into her dressing room threatening to upstage her once more.

Duse initially reacts like a cornered cat. ‘You don’t belong here anymore’. Bernhardt fails to tame her: ‘We could have been friends’. ‘No’ replies Duse bluntly. The initial antagonism slowly gives way to a resignation that the two are confined together until they settle some sort of score. Over the next ninety minutes we witness their differences slowly bringing them together, while a diffident affection tugs at the hems of their overblown egos.

Ludovica Villar-Hauser’s unostentatious staging neatly cuts from their dialogue to flashbacks and reminiscences. They are fragments that shed some light on their backstories, focusing on a pivotal moment when Duse went to Paris to play Marguerite – a role that Bernhardt claimed was hers alone. Throughout their ghostly encounter, Nick Waring comes and goes as the various men who weave in and out of their professional and personal lives.

The crucial questions, though, remain unanswered. And while the intimacy of the piece is fitting, Morgan and Straus fail to capture the richness and depth of the legendary characters. We are seeing them both with their masks down, yet we never really do get a glimpse of what might have lain beneath. Eskin has done his research, but the somewhat flat delivery presses the dialogue into a monochrome portrayal. The sense of mystery or discovery we were expecting becomes the ghostly presence that the writer and performers can never quite grasp. And, as a result, neither can we.