dramamama611 said: "I'm going to disagree that the main conflict is simply about whether a woman should/can play Hamlet. It's an inward and outward struggle with the female identity and particularly that of a strong, intelligent woman.
I'm also going to disagree with worrying about too much prior knowledge. My teen son knows only the basics of Hamlet, nothing of Cyrano...and he had no problems understanding, staying involved. (My son is, of course, of above average brilliance.[Which I say as his totally biased and sarcastic mum.])"
For sure, I think it was the intent of Theresa Rebeck that the play be about the inward/outward struggle around female identity, but other than the Cyrano section where Bernhardt had a living playwright around to interrogate about the question of "is that how you view me and women in general" I thought there were large sections where it seemed just about the question of if Bernhardt could pull off Hamlet.
Regarding the internal sense of femininity, through the privilege of celebrity, Bernhardt slept with who she wanted, took only the parts she was interested in (possibly not entirely true but the choice to play Hamlet and the fixation on playing characters with death scenes seemed to be her own), and did things like own a pet tiger or panther. Unlike her subject Hamlet, it did not appear that Bernhardt had any type of existential crisis: she had a very clear sense of who she was, and other than figuring out how to play Hamlet wasn't struggling internally about identity.
In terms of an external sense of femininity, other than telling which productions sold well and didn't; the play was set in 1897 Paris and aside from the specifics of Bernhardt who's presented as an outlier, I got very little sense of what the life of a woman in 1897 Paris actually looked like other I guess that they were expected to be "flowers". The actress playing Ophelia had nothing to do other than being intimidated by Bernhardt's greatness in one scene, and Rosamond was given one scene to argue with Bernhardt about a man they're both romantically involved with.
In terms of the question of needing prior knowledge, for sure you don't about Cyrano de Bergerac. The characters are experience the text for the first time too. With Hamlet or Bernhardt's relationship with the play Camille, I don't think anyone is going to be completely lost, but there are jokes or references that without prior knowledge won't initially make sense or will only be explained in the play 20 minutes after the fact. And of course, Hamlet is probably the most famous play ever, so either way most people probably have a general understanding of that plot.
