By JERRY TALLMER
:
Current day leading ladies look a lot like the actresses they portray
Pamela Payton-Wright, left as Duse and Laura Esterman as Bernhardt
Eleonora Duse and Sarah Bernhardt lay in scattered pages all over the floor of the pocket-sized Greenwich Street Theatre after a grueling rehearsal session the other night. Well, their words lay there, along with some observations by a certain drama critic Duse chose to cite. As follows:
ELEONORA: I recall a review by George Bernard Shaw.
SARAH: Toad!
SHAW: Madame Bernhardt is beautiful but entirely incredible. Her performance is so artful, so clever, and carried off with such a genial air, that it is impossible not to accept it with good humor.
SARAH: Condescending snot.
SHAW: One feels when the heroine bursts on the scene, a dazzling vision of beauty, that her acting is childishly egotistical. She does not enter into the leading character; she substitutes herself for it.
SARAH: Do you realize, this man is a vegetarian!
SHAW: All this is precisely what does NOT happen in the case of Signora Duse, who performs without makeup and with the simplest of costumes, and who can, with a tremor of the lip, make you feel rather than see, and touch you straight to the very heart . . .
ELEONORA: When I perform in a play I am part of something greater than I am — something that reveals the secrets of the human heart — and we are enriched by it. Art is my refuge and my consolation.
SARAH: It’s only a play, my dear. That’s why they call it play.
“See!” said Laura Esterman, “those words by Shaw are the only thing anyone ever reads. Read Beerbohm! Read James Agate!” — 19th-century critics more favorable toward Bernhardt. Laura Esterman is the Sarah Bernhardt of “Duet,” the play by Otho Eskin now in previews toward a Dec. 4 opening in SoHo.
Pamela Payton-Wright, the Eleonora Duse of “Duet,” held her peace, thanks perhaps to the breakthrough that both actresses — these actresses right here, playing those actresses — said they and director Ludovica Villar-Hauser, founder and owner of the Greenwich Street Theatre, had just that afternoon accomplished in what was the fourth week of rehearsal.
In several supporting roles, including that of Bernard Shaw, is Robert Emmet Lunney.
Ms. Esterman and Ms Payton-Wright have never before worked together, nor had either of then ever worked with this director.
Had they had their choice of roles?
“No,” said Ms. Esterman.
“No,” said Ms. Payton-Wright. “We were interviewed. We didn’t read.”
“Thank God,” said Ms. Esterman.
“Yes,” said Ms. Payton-Wright, “or she might not have asked me.”
Sarah Bernhardt, the Divine Sarah, 1844-1923, had all Paris and much of the rest of the world at her feet, even when in her later years she had only one foot, having had her left leg amputated to save her life.
Eleonora Duse, 1858-1924, Italy’s gift to theatrical immortality, is generally considered the greatest actress who ever lived. She had fewer lovers than Sarah, but her love affairs — particularly with soldier/author/poet Gabriele D’Annunzio, who behaved like a louse — were no less intense.
Ms. Esterman: “When Ludovica asked me which I preferred, Bernhardt or Duse, I said: ‘But of course, Duse. What actress wouldn’t want to play Duse — the benchmark, the gold standard in theater?’ Then Ludovica said: ‘You look just like Bernhardt.’ I said: ‘Really?’ She showed me pictures. Sarah was a beanpole, you know, very, very thin, feline, and fragile.” Suffice to say that Laura Esterman is quite thin.
Ms. Payton-Wright: “Long ago, in acting school, it began to dawn on me that people were typecast, and I didn’t want to play parts that were perfect for me. I believe you get much more interesting results when cast against type.” Suffice to say that Pamela Payton-Wright does not look like a dark, soul-stricken woman of Rome.
Esterman: “I found out on a Friday that I was going to do this, and would start here on the Tuesday. That weekend I went through my bookcase and found three portraits of Bernhardt, a photo, a biography of her, ‘The Divine Sarah,’ by two Englishmen, Arthur Gold and Robert Fizdale, which I read, and Sarah’s own book on the art of theater, and a book called ‘Duse in Paris,’ and a book on playwriting by James Agate.
“Before all this I had the same preconceptions everyone has. of Duse like a goddess and Bernhardt like a big hambone.”
Payton-Wright: “I didn’t know much, but I had known Eva LeGallienne (she in fact broke into theater under Eva LeGallienne) and had read her book on Duse. But I didn’t know the (biographical) details, and hadn’t seen photographs of her. The men she chose!” said the living actress, with some distress.
Esterman; “Yes, and D’Annunzio and Sarah — they — had a little affair.”
Duse’s and Bernhardt’s paths did indeed cross at least once, when Duse, with many misgivings, came to Paris to play Marguerite Gautier, la Dame aux Camillias, a part Bernhardt practically owned.
“Duse was a great star and a formidable opponent,” says the actress who now plays her. “It was a formidable event, very frightening.”
When the two stars of “Duet” were asked if they could think of any actress of our own lifetime who might be ranked with Duse, they came up blank until Laura Esterman finally said: “Where you might bet a flavor of it, but not at all, really, is Maria Callas . . . “
“And they all try to do it, but can’t,” said Pamela Payton-Wright, with a raise of an eyebrow that took in the whole living female population of the performing arts. “Duse would stay in the theater all night to get it right.”
“And so did Sarah, in a different way,” said Ms. Esterman.
Do you two ladies have discussions like this during rehearsals?
“Yes, we do it all the time,” said Pamela Payton-Wright.
“And it’s in the play,” said Laura Esterman.
Why so it is.
