The 19th century French actress Sarah Bernhardt was a huge presence on stage and off. She indulged excessively in all the typical physical pleasures; she played over a hundred lead roles, nearly 40 of which she created; she lost a leg to gangrene, continued to act, and implemented a divan to carry her around in public. John Murrell's play Memoir addresses these adventures in a surprising way: it finds the drama queen at the end of her life, and looks at how they've affected her.

Very little actually happens in this show. Bernhardt wants to write a memoir, and occasionally dictates to her assistant, Georges Pitou, overwrought passages about things like sunsets that have little to nothing to do with her actual life (Pitou humorously files these passages under "P", for "Passionate Rants." It quickly becomes apparent that the memoir is a mess, and really just an excuse for Bernhardt to relive moments from her amazing career. She engages these moments by forcing Pitou to play characters from her life, while she plays the starring role as herself. The play is a LONG series of these little reenactments interspersed with dialogue between the two characters and plenty of "passionate rants" from Bernhardt.

As Bernhardt and Pitou respectively, JoAnn Johnson and David Meyers make a wonderful team. The striking, frizzy-haired Johnson's love of melodrama is perfect for the delirious diva, who in her old age can't even communicate without recalling some tragic heroine from her long-played portfolio. She vamps about, swooning and sighing one minute, screaming insults and orders the next, while poor Pitou endures it all with tender resilience. Meyers, with his prissy mannerisms, handles Bernhardt's lunacy with an utterly endearing combination of disbelieving humor and genuine affection.

Indeed, Meyers' presence is sorely missed when he is not on stage, and Johnson is left to bellow to nobody about her long-lost roles and lovers. The rule of thumb is "show don't tell," and when Murrell tells us about Bernhardt's life via these overly long soliloquies, we snooze. But when similar anecdotes are shown through the surreal play-acting of a crazy old woman and her dedicated servant, we lean forward, riveted by the joys of quirky, truly original theater. JUSTIN WESCOAT SANDERS