The immensely entertaining and surprisingly complex Bernhardt/Hamlet is a must-see at the Goodman Theatre. A hit at New York's Roundabout Theatre on Broadway last year, it’s very on-trend for contemporary feminist dramas playing out in sports, the workplace, and the arts.

It is also a rather delicious backstage drama, like The Dresser or Noises Off, but has more in common with Kiss Me Kate - another work that used Shakespeare as a plot point. In this case playwright Theresa Rebeck tells the story of Sarah Bernhardt (Terri McMahon) in her quest to play Hamlet – working against the odds, gender, and the advice of critics and colleagues.

"You cannot play Hamlet as an act of ego," says her paramour and devotee, playwright Edmond Rostand (John Tufts.) "All of theater is an act of ego," Bernhard counters, and the audience roars at the delivery and the truth of it. 

"A woman who does nothing is considered worthless," Bernhardt says at another point. "A man who does nothing is Hamlet!." 

And it's a true story that Rebeck makes gripping and fun. (Rebeck also wrote Seminar, a similarly language- and thought-centered work which I had the good fortune of seeing with Alan Rickman.)

In Bernhardt/Hamlet, director Donna Feore uses Rebeck’s script to show actors at work, mining Shakespeare for clues to character, struggling with motivation, and working assiduously to meet the demands of cadence and pace.

Much of the action takes place in Bernhardt’s Paris boudoir, where this attractive woman was waited upon by a coterie of fauning men. But the playful and exuberant Bernhardt never lets the under-fulfilled romance bother her, and Rebeck fends off melodrama by dropping in witty laugh bombs left and right.

"You've decided whether you'll like even before you have seen it," Rostand tells a theater reviewer, Louis Lamercier (William Dick). "Of course! I'm a critic!" Lamercier responds. More laughter. 

The Bernhardt character also takes men to task who would put her on a pedestal, but not really egage her mind. She excoriates playwright Rostand for writing the play, Cyrano de Bergerac, modeling his love interest Roxanne after Bernhardt. "How can you put all your genius into Cyrano and make Roxanne an empty vessel?" she asks. 

One also expects that a play about actors playing Hamlet might have some breakthrough moments of great Shakespeare. Be assured. Wise casting brings us two intensely good, full-fledged Shakespearean performers – as Sarah Bernhardt, Terri McMahon brings a bedrock of 23 years of performances at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, but has all the range for this dual role.

Larry Yando, in the role of Constant Coquelin, is that world-weary trouper who has played Hamlet four times, but has now aged into the roles of Polonius and Hamlet’s father – and imparts acting advice to the less experienced players. When he turns on the power, it is electrifying. The cast is so good, the production values so high, and the play so entertaining there is only one thing to say: go see it.

Bernhardt/Hamlet is also a familiar story of actresses everywhere, who lose their grasp on major roles for stage or screen as their youth fades. These days actresses like Nicole Kidman, Selma Hayek, and Emma Thompson are defying this by successfully producing projects or scripts themselves.

And so did Sarah Bernhardt, and she did it way back in 1896. One of the first international celebrities, she achieved her global fame in analog: acting on stage, celebrated in newspapers, and promoted by posters and by word of mouth.

She was also the most prominent serious actor, among a handful, who successfully took her stage skills to the new medium of film, in 1900. That’s where the collective memory of my generation picks up on her. During her last quarter century and after, the term “Sarah Bernhardt” suggested a cross between an immensely talented stage beauty, who was also a diva – in other words, she knows her power, and how to use it. 

This is the character we meet in Rebeck's play. As she hit fifty, Bernhardt tired of playing Camille, her signature role – and she knew she was too old for the part, so she decided to try Hamlet. A master of her own fate, in 1893 Bernhardt became the manager of the Théâtre de la Renaissance, and in 1899 she relocated to the former Théâtre des Nations, which she renamed the Théâtre Sarah Bernhardt and managed until her death in 1923. 

"I am not a tragic figure," Rebeck's Bernhardt asserts. "I do not play Hamlet as a woman. I play him as myself." And you can see Bernhardt/Hamlet through October 20 at Goodman Theatre.