by Edmond Rostand
seen at the Noël Coward Theatre on 22 June 2026
Simon Evans directs Adrian Lester in the title role in a new version of Rostand's famous 1897 play Cyrano de Bergerac, an RSC production transferred from Stratford to the West End. The text has been adapted by Evans and Debris Stevenson. Susannah Fielding plays Roxanne, a childhood friend of Cyrano's with whom he is secretly in love, and Levi Brown plays Christian de Neuvillette, an untutored young soldier smitten by her, who asks Cyrano for help in wooing her.
The play has enormous energy due to the extrovert character of Cyrano, who defends his honour - his panache - on the slightest provocation, and sometimes seems to encourage unwary newcomers to annoy him. The opening scenes contain a dazzling example of his style in vanquishing a "foe". Intertwined with this exuberance is the love story in which Cyrano pours out his heart in the service of Christian's wooing, so that Roxane falls for the young soldier, who is sufficiently naive not to recognise his false position until fatefully late in the day.
The play (being French) was written in rhymed alexandrines, a form almost impossible to maintain convincingly in modern English. Part of the charm of this adaptation its its clever reconfiguring of the language, in which the sophisticated Cyrano and the often ditzy Roxanne often talk in rhyme, and the ridiculous Comte de Guiche (Scott Handy) spouts stilted platitudes in clunking verse, while others do not. Christian in particular speaks in a demotic Brummie accent that perfectly recasts his provincial origins for a modern British audience. The programme notes provide some interesting insights into how Evans and Stevenson went about adapting the play, taking some fascinating liberties with their material.
The theatricality of the piece is emphasised by frequent asides to the audience, and indeed there are zestful elements of pantomime in the behaviour of Cyrano's "gang" in the opening sunnier scenes. These provide a suitable contrast to the more serious developments as the men go off to war with its merciless consequences, while the final scene reaches a melancholy resolution.
Adrian Lester's superb mastery of language and his physical bravado carry the play, all the while subtly allowing the character's fateful insecurity to flicker through the facade. All the flash and excitement creates a lifetime of missed opportunities for honesty, which leads Roxane to an explosion of anger fully justified by her friend's deceptions.
It's a great revival, tempering the incipient sentimentality of the play's Romantic sheen with down-to-earth stagecraft to great effect, using an utter;y different approach from the last version I saw six years ago.
