Cyrano
Adapted by Anthony Burgess
Theatre at Large
Space
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
The story of Cyrano has been a stage favourite since Edmond Rostand’s syrupy romance hit the Paris boards almost exactly a century ago. Since then it has become a regularly revived cinema property- who could forget Gerard Depardieu as the schnozz ?- and an English rep staple as well. Ralph Richardson’s biographer describes how Rafe and Olivier vied for the part. The choice was between Cyrano and Shakepeare. Olivier lost the toss and had to play Lear instead.
The appeal of the play remains in its lambent theme of constancy in love and the enduring hope, these days under permanent siege from the assassins of advertising, that beauty is more than skin deep. In taking up fragments of the life story of Cyrano de Bergerac, a forgotten seventeenth soldier poet with an only moderately awful probiscus, Rostand confected a tale of preposterous sentiment and Munchausen courage. His Cyrano is a brilliant versifier and master swordsman. He is also what we might now call nasally challenged. So it is no surprise that his beloved Roxane has eyes only for young, handsome himbo, Christian.
Auckland-based Theatre at Large has taken Anthony Burgess’s wordy translation and added so much stage business of their own that I wonder whether Theatre de Trop might better describe them. For a substantial section of Act One at the matinee I attended the performers laboured like a TIE company trying to please a busload of surly Year Nines.
The staging from directors Christian Penny and Anna Marbrook is appealingly simple, however. John Verryt’s set has a raised wooden stage with trapdoors and steps on each side, the only furniture an upright piano. This Cyrano is a test of actors’ resources. Unfortunately it is some time into the production before they begin to trust the tale.
Jacob Rajan steps from behind the piano in the mask of Harlequino for some hammy French warmup gags and then we are deluged by Burgess’s garrulous exposition. The characters are introduced and the actors come flouncing on, mugging and gesticulating in a veritable eisteddfod of coarse acting. It can be a fine thing to use a broad commedia style but, in combination with Burgess’s actor-unfriendly text, there is is an overall effect of too much effort for too little theatrical return.
The production uses a mix of panto and melodrama. There are even miniature puppets bobbing up from traps to represent Cyrano’s sword fight with a hundred foes. Later, in Act Two, diminutive nuns squabble in contrast to the serenely contemplative Roxane. Some of the cast is cross-dressed in good burlesque style; Cyrano’s sidekick Le Bret (Margaret-Mary Hollins), for instance, and Roxane’s maid Duenna, played amusingly, but ultimately with tiresome excess, by Brian Carbee. The blend of romance and knockabout comedy is uneasy and the use of Harlequino as narrator becomes increasingly arbitrary. There is an odd lack of proportion to the piece -especially with a ninety minute first half.
The strength of the production emerges in Act Two where, after a flurry of overacting and overwriting, the simple lineaments of Rostand’s story are reasserted and the company exploits the force of the romance without feeling a need to perpetually spoof it. Alexander Campbell’s De Guiche retreats from vaudeville villain to someone of more complexity. And, onwards from the balcony scene, where Cyrano famously scripts Christian’s wooing of Roxane, the dynamics of the relationship between the three takes centre stage.
As Christian, Peter Daube is suitably artless and innocent, lending credibility to Cyrano’s tribute to his hero’s death. France Herve gives Roxane a lively individuality and a memorable stillness in the final scene, which is also a triumph for Cameron Rhodes in the plum central role. Although troubled by some huskiness in his voice, Rhodes brings considerable pathos and presence to the part – especially when the throttling demands of the Burgess translation start to abate.
Theatre at Large is a skilled and energetic company and Penny and Marbrook have astutely recognised that there is still dramatic force in this old romantic chestnut. Cyrano has much to commend it. But shaved back to a hundred minutes and spared its egregious embellishments, it could have been a winner by a lot more than a nose.
The Adelaide Review, March, 1997.