Cyrano de Bergerac

by Edmond Rostand adapted by Martin Crimp

seen by live streaming from the Playhouse Theatre on 20 February 2020

Jamie Lloyd directs Jamrs McAvoy in the title role, with Anita-Joy Uwajeh as Roxane, Eben Figueiredo as Christian and Tom Edden as De Guiche, in a production designed by Soutra Gilmour and lit by Jon Clark.

Edmond Rostand's 1897 play sought to re-intorduce poetry and the idea of romantic heroism to a theatre world which he saw as bedevilled by too much naturalism. Traditionally this has inspired productions revelling in lush seventeenth-century costunes and swaggering panache, with Cyrano, the main character, a self-defined misfit in an age where physical attractiveness is held o be essential in the world of love.

Here, everything has been stripped back. Though the screening (at least) provided an opening announcement that we were in 1640, the stage is bare, the props include plastic chairs and microphones, the costumes are modern and unprepossessing, the diction relentlessly demotic - James McAvoy fully Scottish, Christian and other soldiers the broadest modern estuary, Roxane articulate as an intellectual. There is nothing lush except the language itself, which proves to be resilient. Indeed, in a play about the power of words both to inspire and express love, it is essential that the heightened language should express all manner of emotions - savage mockery as much as tender lyricism, exuberant high spirits and quieter, almost desperate self-revelation. 

The artificiality of the situation is heightened by the fact that the opening scenes, once Christian has been introduced, concentrate on establishing Cyrano's shortness of temper and passion for literary aesthetics, by means of a drawn out episode about a bad actor attempting Hamlet. Here, with people on stage being essentially anonymous, and Cyrano himself for a long time unseen, one senses a lack of sharp direction (or judicious cutting) and one waits impatiently for matters to become clearer. Luckily, they soon do, once Cyrano's presence has enlivened everything.

The principal interest of the play is the weirdly fractured romance plot, whereby Roxanne is attracted by the handsome Christian, but demands high-flown sentiment, Christian loves Roxanne but is an inarticulate puppy, and Cyrano also loves Roxanne but cannot bring himself to speak to her, and so agrees to provide Christian with all the words he needs. Though Cyrano is crushed when Roxanne confides in him about Christian, he proposes to help the young man, and at one level it seems like a sort of high-jinks, here outrageously flagged by the comment "I've seen it in a Steve Martin movie, and it works". But the whole situation is profoundly damaging; Christian is increasingly uneasy at both the deception and at Cyrano's real motives; Cyrano never faces reality; Roxanne is (here) explosively angry when she realises the truth: a boys' game does not look so funny or innocent to the person duped by it.

Even without the visual trappings the distress of the protagonists is plain, and the modern translation, still often in rhymed couplets, by turns resembling the extempore skill of rap musicians and harking back to more classic styles, carries both the infectious high spirits of Cyrano's defences against the world, and the deep pathos if his inability to speak his true mind except in the guise of someone else. Both James McAvoy and Anita-Joy Uwajeh reveal how intense emotion can be expressed entirely by tone of voice, and they also show how best to use microphones to achieve a powerful and intimate effect. Here, in a play that on the face of it would seem least suited to being miked, the use of modern technology brilliantly exposes the traps into which Cyrano, Roxanne and Chrsitian have all fallen.