Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac is another cherished role often attempted by top stars. Like the CSC’s current Macbeth, the New Group’s musical version of the classic romance of the large-nosed poet-swordsman and his frustrated love for the beautiful Roxanne, is mildly entertaining but passionless.
Previous attempts to musicalize Cyrano have not been successful. A 1973 tuner did win a Tony for Christopher Plummer but ran only a month and has disappeared without a trace. So has a 1993 Dutch adaptation which cropped up briefly on Broadway and featured simplistic staging and execrable lyrics (“Cyrano’s tremendous fun/Tremendous fun for every nun!”). This version, adapted and directed by Erica Schmidt and abbreviated to just “Cyrano,” drains the work of Rostand’s poetry and leaves routine melodrama in its place.
Peter Dinklage of “Game of Thrones” fame plays the title hero without a false enormous proboscis, and we are meant to substitute the actor’s dwarfism for the missing nose as the cause of Cyrano’s anguish and his excuse for denying his love for Roxanne and writing love letters under the name of the more conventionally handsome Christian. (Dinklage’s height is never referred to in the adaptation.) Because of this Schmidt cuts Cyrano’s celebrated aria of insults to his own snoot, and we lose a major demonstration of his miraculous wit and sense of self-deprecation. Dinklage does a professional job of evoking the role’s exalted spirit, but he is hampered by Schmidt’s edits and his lack of a vibrant singing voice. Cyrano is given very little musical musings in the pleasant but undistinguished score by Aaron and Bryce Dessner (music) and Matt Berninger and Carin Besser (lyrics). The big numbers are given to Jasmine Cephas Jones’s Roxanne and Blake Jenner’s Christian, both of whom have lovely pipes, but this throws the balance off; Cyrano is supposed to be the star.
Schmidt’s direction is mostly unimaginative and repetitious, often resorting to supporting characters moving in slow motion while featured players express their inner thoughts in solos. The only time music and staging come together to create genuine emotion is during a group number after a bloody battle, as nameless slain figures sing of their loved ones. It’s a sweet and touching sequence, beautifully sung and directed, but it detracts from the main story.
Ironically, Ritchie Coster and Grace McLean in supporting roles give the most vital and complex performances. Coster shades the cravenness of De Guiche, Roxanne’s powerful suitor, with convincing glimpses of his genuine affection for the lady and his self-loathing. McLean is so funny and specific as Marie, Roxanne’s pragmatic companion, she steals all of their scenes together. When the villain and the nursemaid are the most interesting people in Cyrano, that’s a problem.
