I'd like a superior Roxane and a slightly more theatrically vivid emphasis and pacing in direction, but this Cyrano de Bergerac is intelligently directed, beautifully cast, and handsomely, if rather darkly, designed. Colm Feore played a flashier one at Stratford in 1994; but this subtler, more thoughtful Cyrano is certainly romantic and filled with action and poetry.
My only real problem with this excellent Cyrano is that I miss the Brian Hooker translation. In his published introduction to this translation, Anthony Burgess devotes several pages to the shortcomings of Hooker's translation, and I don't believe a word of it. In fact, before I could say that, the distinguished teacher, translator and theater artist Peter Wylde (who arranged Oscar Wilde's letters for this season's Ever Yours, Oscar) remarked that Hooker's is the finest version in English. This one is fairly accurate and even includes a number of lines in the original French to flavor Cyrano's speeches, but it hasn't Hooker's musical, theatrical ring. Rather than the literal, "Then as the stanza ends, I strike!" I'd rather hear, "Then, as I end the refrain, Thrust home!" The play actually ends with "Mon Panache" but "My White Plume" sounds more thrilling. And by comparison, the wit in Burgess' version of the "Nose Speech" is pedantic. Much of the success of Jose Ferrer's Oscar-winning film version is due to its fairly faithful use of Hooker's sonorous, exciting language.
Of course, Ferrer was noted for his rich baritone voice, and Colm Feore has a drier tenor. I consider Feore to be a great character actor, anyway, more complex and interesting than the leading man most seem to think him. He plays Cyrano as a rich, zestful but unhappy character. Actually, the finest Cyrano I've seen was Heath Lamberts in a magnificent 1982 Shaw Festival production. An acknowledged comic genius, Lamberts was a dumpy man without a rich, musical voice, but he was truly great in farces. His Cyrano literally had most of the audience rocking in their seats with loud laughter, then finally sobbing uncontrollably. Everyone I know who saw it considered his Cyrano extraordinary. Actually, the original 1897 Cyrano, the French farceur Coquelin, was a dumpy comic actor for whom Rostand wrote the play. So the grand, imposing voice of Jose Ferrer and before him of the tall, commanding Walter Hampden are merely an American tradition. Historically, Cyrano onstage has been a comic figure in more ways than one, symbolized but not restricted to his having an oversized nose.
But Cyrano is also the finest poet and swordsman in France. The beautiful Roxanne is in love with his soul, but she believes that the handsome Christian, not Cyrano, is writing the love poems that have won her heart. In short, this romantic, fanciful play with the gorgeous language is the living dream of every unattractive or merely plain man with grand aspirations and fantasies of love.
Feore is a moodier, more dignified Cyrano than most, but he triumphs in the wit and passion of the role. Only in the unavoidably melodramatic final dying aria which he delivers center stage alone does this Cyrano strike a tragic pose. And he is heart-wrenching.
Undercutting his good looks, Mike Shara mines what comedy he can by emphasizing Christian's dumb luck in love as the handsome young lover, without undercutting Christian's basic masculine appeal and decency. Amanda Lisman's Roxane grows in maturity and understanding toward the end but lacks the dewy irresistibility of the exquisitely innocent girl. Roxane is initially shallow but here seems callow.
A strong supporting cast fills in the many probably too many complicating characters, Santo Loquasto's sets and costumes are certainly elegant but more somber than usual. And the fight scenes showy duels and explosive blasts of war are compelling and reasonably convincing. Alan Brodie's lighting is striking and stark in the war scene. Leslie Arden's music, like those other designs and effects seems to be all of a piece with director Donna Feore's more powerful than lilting view of the romance.
