Estelle Meyer breathtaking in the role of the “sacred monster”

Director and author Géraldine Martineau has produced a funny and moving play at the Théâtre du Palais-Royal. Actress Estelle Meyer is exceptionally free and bold.

It is a play that is carried out at a cracking pace, without any moment of hesitation or breathing. Everything goes quickly, everything follows on with great fluidity. The actors brought together by Géraldine Martineau, who is directing her own text, are all convincing.

Estelle Meyer is exceptional in The Extraordinary Destiny of Sarah Bernhardt at the Palais-Royal theater in Paris until December 31, 2024. The young singer and actress establishes complicity with the audience from the first minute thanks to a tasty anecdote. The tone is set: the play will be festive, free, generous and resolutely feminist. It took a lot of gift of the gab to play the tragedienne that Jean Cocteau described as “sacred monster”. Estelle Meyer is Sarah Bernhardt, in her cracks, her excesses, her eccentricities…

“When I read Sarah Bernhardt’s memoirs, My double life, I was fascinated by this woman, by her exceptional destiny, her avant-gardism. I am passionate about memoirs and biographies because I like to understand a person’s psyche through the sum of their choices, encounters and coincidences. I immediately wanted to tell Sarah’s story,” explains Géraldine Martineau, in her letter of intent. The life of Sarah Bernhardt, summarized in 1 hour 45 minutes on stage, is fascinating.

The tragedienne made her life a work of art, sometimes came to terms with reality, committed herself to causes: she defended Louise Michel, supported Émile Zola during the Dreyfus affair, went to the front in 1916… And finally, she became the first “world influencer”, by being an adored star, at the origin of the star system. Her only passion remains the theater, all her life despite the difficulties. Amputated at more than 70 years of the right leg, she continues to act, lying down or sitting, hence her nickname of “Mother the Chair”. Nickname which joins a long list also composed of the “Divine” or the “Scandalous”. Because Sarah Bernhardt is whole, without any concession.What I like most is that Sarah is a strong, ambitious, free and determined woman. She did not build herself thanks to men or in the shadow of a man,” observes Géraldine Martineau.

In an ingenious setting, ten artists play 35 characters. From the teenager arriving at her demi-mondaine mother’s house in Paris to the American tour, via her tumultuous appearances at the Comédie-Française, Géraldine Martineau masterfully returns to the atypical journey of an extraordinary and extravagant woman. Sarah Bernhardt does nothing like the others: she sleeps in a coffin and immortalizes the moment, offers an alligator to her son, transforms the Odéon theater into a hospital… Her motto: “All the same!”

The Extraordinary Destiny of Sarah Bernhardt is a fantastic journey. It will now be difficult to imagine Sarah Bernhardt without having Estelle Meyer in mind.