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By DIANA BIRD
Rappahannock News ContributinK Writer
The Theatre at Washington presented a two-character program, “Memoir” by John Murrell, on Saturday evening, Oct. 26. The performances of Madigan Ryan as Sarah Bernhardt (1844-1923) and Richard Fink as Georges Pitou, her secretary, were amusing and memorable.
Sarah Bernhardt’s memoirs, “Ma Double Vie,” published in 1907, must have been mined by John Murrell to find details for the play, but the story goes beyond 1907 to the year before Bernhardt’s death for its setting, Belle-Isle-en-Mer off the coast of Brittany, and some of its events.
The portrayal of Sarah and Pitou are masterful and entertaining. Sarah is a self-absorbed, willful and protesting, aging woman; Pitou, an understanding, compliant but still self-respecting and talented employee. The matter presented requires a sophisticated and educated audience, because the material is dramatic in a historical, rather than a situational sense. It hews to the character of Bernhardt and some of the situations and incidents of her life. In addition, with only two individuals on stage, the means available to a playwright to recreate a period and its atmosphere are limited. “Memoir” is not the well-made play.
The developed line that holds the action together is the mortality of everything, even an indomitable Sarah Bernhardt. Her acting career spanned 60 years and one of the last scenes of the play has her considering a new performance in what was the year before her death. She knows she is dying, but in comparing herself to the sun, a dying star, but one that faithfully reappears each day, she resists the inevitable.
Madigan Ryan beautifully employs every resource of a fine actor. One loves to watch her gesture, move
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