Cyrano de Bergerac (Stratford Shakespeare Festival, 7/9/09)

Of course, I couldn't miss Cyrano de Bergerac.  It's one of my all-time favorite shows.  I first saw it as a young child in Dallas, probably at the Dallas Theater Center, where it made an indelible impression on me and helped shape my love for period drama and swashbuckling romance.  I saw it again in New York in the early 1980s, the magnificent Royal Shakespeare Company production with Derek Jacobi and Sinead Cusack, which remains my ideal.  And fifteen years ago I saw it here at Stratford.  I can't offer any opinion on the one I saw as a child, when I pretty much loved everything I saw on a stage, but the RSC and 1994 Stratford versions were both superb; I count myself lucky to have seen two such productions.

(Photo: Colm Feore as Cyrano intimidates Robert Persichini as Montfleury; click to enlarge)

But this one was oddly dissatisfying. 

All the pieces were there, including the same leading actor as in 1994, the talented Colm Feore, on the same stage.  But it just didn't feel quite right to me, as a connoisseur of Cyrano.  I fretted fitfully for much of the performance.  Feore's voice felt too high-pitched.  Roxanne's (Amanda Lisman) voice felt too modern, which I realize is a very vague criticism, but I'm having trouble putting my finger on what bothered me about her performance.  Ragueneau (Steve Ross) was too small in personality, too quiet; why didn't they get Bruce Dow to come do this role?  Castel-Jaloux (Robert Persichini, whom I enjoyed in Earnest) was too melancholy and his meanderings on stage often felt aimless.  It's no reflection on her acting skills (which she had little opportunity to display), but Karen Glave had too girlish a voice for the Duenna and, especially, for Mother Marguerite, who sounded much too young to be dispensing such wisdom.

There were bright spots.  Mike Shara made a fabulous left turn from the witty and verbose Algernon Moncrieff in Earnest to the tongue-tied, "comely but dumb" Christian.  He's not that stunningly good-looking, but he effectively embodied a sort of hunky jock that actually worked better than the usual pretty-boy approach.  And his shift from lust to dismay when he realized that Roxane was really in love with an illusion rather than him was touching in its painful dignity  I will be watching for more from Shara at future Festivals.  Paul Nolan made a nicely snarky Valvert and handled his end of the duel quite well.  Wayne Best acquitted himself well as Le Bret.

I am inclined to blame the director (Donna Feore) for the problems; I kept wanting to jump out of my seat and say "make it bigger!"  I know these are talented actors; why did their performances feel so smothered and small?  Likewise, I question her bizarre decision to leave some parts of the play untranslated so we could "hear Rostand in his original voice."  Yes, that's a lovely concept, but in practice, it meant jarring shifts from relatively trivial lines in French to plot-important bits that remained in English.  This would happen, aggravatingly, in mid-speech.  I probably got only about 60% of the French, even knowing the play, and I'll bet much of the audience was sitting in polite incomprehension.  Sorry, Ms. Feore, but that was a bad idea.  This was the Anthony (A Clockwork Orange) Burgess translation, and like any really good translation, it is a work of art in its own right.  Both Burgess and Rostand deserve better than to be made into a mashup.  And why did Ms. Feore feel it necessary to start the production off with a boy in modern dress sitting on stage while actors gamboled around him until he eventually picked up a sword and plumed hat?  Did she perhaps feel that the audience needed a proxy?  Perhaps she missed the bit where the first scene takes place in a theater and the on-stage and off-stage audiences effectively merge into one group watching Cyrano chase Montfleury offstage?

The production still worked for me in some places.  The costumes were scrumptious, though a bit plain.  The wigs were wonderfully done; all the long flowing hair looked like it actually belonged to the actors.  Montfleury (Robert Persichini again) looked like a baroque opera sketch come to life.  The infamous nose was appropriately large. 

John Stead's fight choreography was wonderful, and Feore knows how to handle himself in a stage fight.  Whenever Cyrano pulled out his rapier everything came to life.  The big battle scene was a joy; someone had way too much fun with fire and explosion effects.  The spotlight effect made it look like Cyrano was indeed singlehanded fighting the entire Spanish army, though when he was finally pulled down by three Spaniards with swords, it was definitive enough to make me wonder precisely how he was supposed to have survived to the final act.  Those Spaniards looked pretty hostile.

The interaction between Shara and Feore was excellently done, especially in the balcony scene; Cyrano's impatience with Christian's crudeness was very well-played.  Likewise, the "fell from the moon" byplay between Cyrano and de Guiche worked perfectly, even half in French.  And Feore managed to carry off what has to be one of the longest, talkiest deaths ever written for the stage: the dying Cyrano travels, offstage, from Paris to Roxanne's convent, where he chats for awhile before announcing his own death, then makes a lengthy heroic speech before finally collapsing.

The emotional buttons still got punched; I wept copiously at both Christian's death and Cyrano's and walked out of the theater feeling not entirely dissatisfied.  But I also had time to think a little too much about Cyrano and how he seems to be much more in love with Roxane as a muse and himself as a tragic martyr than he is with her as a woman.  Letting Christian die thinking Roxane loved him was an act of generosity.  Letting Roxane then mourn for fifteen years while he keeps secret the fact that she actually fell for Cyrano via his letters is either cruelty or sheer cowardice.  This tended to escape me as a child and teenager, when I was overwhelmed by the glory of all this tragic romance and sumptuous language.  Older and more cynical, I wanted to give Cyrano a good slap.

Overall...if you've never seen Cyrano, this production will probably work for you.  I'm an unusually picky audience simply because I love the play with such a passion.  It's not bad, it's just not as good as it could be, or as good as it has been elsewhere and elsewhen.  And if you can be distracted by costumes and fight scenes, you'll have a fine time.  Likewise, if you know French.

But there have been better productions.   When I get home, I will pull out my old videotapes of the RSC production and watch Jacobi again.

Comments

[Serge]

I kept wanting to jump out of my seat and say "make it bigger!"

I can't.
Some jokes come much too easily.
("Since when has that ever stopped you?")

I'll make the usual comment about how I've seen various film versions, but not the play. My wife had seen the play decades before with Beastmaster's Mark Singer as Christian and she enjoyed it. A few months ago, when PBS(?) announced it'd show the play, with Kevin Kline as Cyrano, and Jennifer Garner as Roxanne, I thought that at last this was my chance.

I got so bored out of my skull that I quit after one hour.

I don't know if the actors were the problem. Maybe it's because I was seeing it on TV, which has its own language, and not in a theater where there'd have been the immediacy of being there.

[Kip W]

This one I've never seen, but I enjoyed reading it. Of course, I saw the Steve Martin movie inspired by it, and that was enjoyable, if considerably shallower.

[Serge]

Kip W...

Chris McConnell: What am I afraid of her for? She's no rocket scientist.
C.D. Bales: Well, actually, she is a rocket scientist.

[Paul A.]

the magnificent Royal Shakespeare Company production with Derek Jacobi and Sinead Cusack

Ooh, I wish I could have seen that.

old videotapes of the RSC production

...wait, does that mean I can still see that?

[Neil Willcox]

...we could "hear Rostand in his original voice."

Interesting idea, but I don't see it working on stage unless you have a bilingual audience* (in which case why not stage it in French?) If one were interested in that, one could get the 1990 film version in French and watch with English subtitles. The English subtitles are the Burgess translation, which, like the play, are in alexandrine couplets (except when someone is quoting a poem in a different form).

The Steve Martin film is an interesting riff off it, but suffers from changing the story from a tragedy to a comedy.

* For example an audience full of Serges. Wait, this is Stratford Ontario**, right? Canada is (officially) bilingual so...
** The bit on the other post about sitting on an island in the river Avon, with ducks and swans gave me a mental image of exactly the spot you're sitting, but in the wrong Stratford.

[Serge]

Neil... A surge of serges is too horrible a thought to contemplate. Much safer for one's sanity is that movie you suggested. with Gérard Depardieu, he of the big conk, playing a character with an even bigger conk. I saw it with my wife, which means subtitles, an experience that can be disconcerting when one knows the language being subtitled.

[Serge]

Paul A... Unless your VCR has coughed out its last cassette. I still have a TV/VCR as a backup, but when that one croaks, I will have nothing with with to watch "The Day The Earth Froze".

[Susan de Guardiola]

Paul A.,
Well, in theory you could see it, but my personal tapes get mailed to Australia when they are pried out of my cold, dead hands. Amazon appears to have a few used copies here, priced appropriately.

If I were able to locate another VCR and the appropriate cables, I might be convinced to make a copy, since it's out of print.

[Susan de Guardiola]

Neil,
Yeah, I was on Tom Patterson Island, which is unique to the Ontario Stratford. I took some pictures, which I will post, um, about as fast as I usually post things with pictures.

I was picking up some of the French, but I can't think fast enough to really process rapid-fire dialogue. And the switches could be incredibly annoying:

We are the Gascony cadets!
Captain Castel-Jaloux is our chief!
[French French French French French]
[French French French French French]

Yeah, right. Canada may be officially bilingual, but this is Ontario and a large share of the audience is from the U.S. and probably less bilingual than I.

[Susan de Guardiola]

Depardieu is fabulous.

I haven't seen the Steve Martin film (what a shock), but answer me this question: does he get Roxane at the end? I have this bad feeling that he does, and, sorry, this is not a story that really wants a happy ending tacked on, no matter how much I want to slap Cyrano when a production gives me time for my mind to wander.

[Paul A.]

Susan, I don't think I was trying to get my hands on your videos specifically, just confirming I'd correctly understood that such things existed.

...I see what you mean about the prices.

[Serge]

Susan... Depardieu's film is faithful to the usual outcome.

[Susan de Guardiola]

Serge,
I know; I've seen it. I was asking about the Steve Martin one (called Roxane, yes?)

[Susan de Guardiola]

Paul,
Well, let me know if you can't find an economical way to see them and really want to. I probably ought to arrange to have my tapes transferred to DVD anyway, before they disintegrate.

[Serge]

Susan... Yes, it's called Roxanne. As for your earlier question, Puevfgvna ehaf bss jvgu gur erfgnhenag'f frkl jnvgerff naq Ebknaar qrpvqrf fur yvxrf Plenab orggre. Do I hear someone arghing?

[Marilee J. Layman]

I have two VCR/DVDs, and I know they both work to transfer from VCR to DVD or the other direction. I haven't tried what they both call "complete" DVDs which means you can send them to other people to use on their machines.

It would take me a while to get to these: I have two medical appointments next week, a fair amount of work on our BFAC website the week after that, then another week with two medical appointments.

[Kip W]

When I said Martin's version was shallower, that's one thing I had in mind. I try not to be a blurter about plotlines, though I confess to having thoroughly enjoyed a capsule review my Michael "Psychotronic" Weldon that went along these lines (paraphrase recall in effect):

"Of course, it is irresponsible to give away the ending of a quality movie, so... it was her uncle! He staged the whole thing! He wanted revenge because her father took the house away from him!"