WORDS, it’s said, can say so much and it’s the power and beauty of language, coupled with the devastation of things left unsaid, that lights up this hugely impressive, always pleasing revisit to the tale of soldier-poet Cyrano.
Brilliantly-skilled as a wordsmith Cyrano, blessed with a nose which undermines any confidence he might have, woos the object of his love by becoming the secret ghost writer for a far less able suitor.
Packed with language at all its levels – soaring poetry to guttural utterings – this rollicking, thrilling and totally affecting Cyrano is simply a treat.
Lavishly-staged and with quite the best musical interventions seen for a long while, this is a company piece which has lofty ambitions but manages to fulfil every one of them.
It’s the central skewed love triangle on whom the success of this production rests and they all shine.
Susannah Fielding’s Roxane is a thoroughly modern woman about as far from the passive object of male love she could so easily be. She has her own agenda when it comes to finding love and a rich vein of sparkling wit and almost tom-boyish challenge make this a wonderfully rounded reading.
Lover Christian (Levi Brown) may be underpowered when it comes to improvised poetry but he commands sympathy and support in a way that, in a previous age, may have attracted something closer to scorn. In our enlightened times we don’t label the unskilled as risible losers and, tellingly, he is never laughed at.
As Cyrano himself Adrian Lester is both convincing and dazzling. It’s a performance full of stage-filling bombast but retaining so many subtleties and quiet moments throughout. For all the tragedy of a doomed love life, this is still essentially a comic part and the timing and nuance on show is marvellous.
Support comes from so many places and the entire company make the most of the comic moments on offer, of which there are many. Scott Handy as the lank-haired timid Compte and Greer Dale-Foulkes as the livewire but gauche companion both deserve a mention but there are gems wherever you look.
It could easily be said that the true star of this show is its script, a new adaptation by Simon Evans and Debris Stevenson. Retaining all the pomp and wordplay of the original and adding a sassy, gritty dash of modernism, it covers all bases and is never short on surprises.
Judicious blending of modern idioms and unashamedly theatrical asides makes for a show which really seems to enjoy itself.
Grace Smart’s design takes us from the footlights of a Paris stage, to the smoke-covered centre of the battle. The flavour is eclectic rather than specific when it comes to history but the action moves seamlessly from one place to another and, in the hands of director Simon Evans, never drags.
In a show laden with so many fine poetic moments and passages of dazzling verbal wit, it’s the shocking impact of the loss of those skills as Cyrano, revisited in later years, crumbles under a combination of age, injury and perhaps a hint towards dementia, that is so shocking. If we are what we say, then what are we when we have nothing to say or cannot say it?
There is perhaps a case for viewing the fairly long drawn out ending as verging on the sentimental. But the gradual quieting of words, the play’s chief ingredient, is justified and ultimately both moving and successful.
