Slightly more than a century ago Sarah Bernhardt was an extremely gifted and wildly popular actress -- arguably the most popular female celebrity of the late 19th century. Her stage roles ranged from Racine's classically tragic Phaedra to the sentimental dying courtesan Camille. Bernhardt's legendary stature as both performer and diva render modern impersonations problematic. Anyone who dares to play her onstage is asking for trouble.

In Mariemont Players' production of John Murrell's Memoirs, the audience discovers an elderly Bernhardt dictating her memoirs to a male secretary, Georges Pitou. We are privy to her memories because she continually goads him to reenact her "scene partners" -- rendering some of the major conflicts of her life, all in the guise of writing her memoirs. Difficulties with family members, lovers, other actors and producers are all exposed, as well as some tantalizing bits from her stage roles.

"La Bernhardt" is raging against the dying of the light in this play, the dying of her energy and her powers of communication, and the eventual death of her physical body. The memoirs are her principal method of conveying the essence of her life into the future, and she is plagued by her lack of memory and the limits of her mind.

Barbara Karol's performance as Sarah Bernhardt combines outward gentility and restraint with an inner fire, just waiting to be uncorked. The play gives her several set speeches, each with its own build and fiery climax. You keep thinking she will tire and the next scene will collapse of its own symbolic weight, but it never happens. Karol's sheer will power carries most of the evening, even as she battles the somewhat episodic and wordy nature of the script. She does Bernhardt unselfconsciously, a feat in itself.

The production is also well served by Jack Williams as Georges Pitou. Wisely refraining from the intensity of Karol, he plays the part in a more realistic mode. This gives him the chance to serve as a contrasting, more grounded side of human nature. The part requires that he impersonate a number of interesting characters, from Bernhardt's stage mother to her producer to an older and humbler Oscar Wilde. Each is rendered with humor but without undue histrionics.

Director Jef Brown manages a difficult script with insight and alacrity. He allows his players to be theatrical but not false. He has inspired a simple but handsome-looking production for his actors to inhabit. And he infuses his actors with the disciplined energy needed to carry off this complex play.

Ultimately Memoir is a play about the theatre, and about its greatest stars. In the evening of her life, Sarah Bernhardt looks back, wondering how much worth there was beneath the glamour and the glitz. In the end she might have understood that it was her relationships, not the trappings of power and her fame, that were worth the journey. Grade A-