The first time my eyes welled up in a theatre theatre was in 1983 while watching Sir Derek Jacobi in the role of Cyrano. Edmond Rostand’s swashbuckling French soldier-poet has a nose that is probably the biggest in literature, Pinnochio notwithstanding.
The conk gets between him and first and only love Roxane, so self-conscious is he of the proboscis. This is why the verse that he has written for and about her is put into the service and mouth of the much better looking Christian, who she very much likes the look of and who also loves Roxane.
Though she is convinced that she is falling in love with Christian we know that it is Cyrano’s words and the man who wrote them who she really adores.
That production in the 1980s was in many ways a classic production. You could tell because Jacobi and other cast members wore wide-brimmed musketeer hats with feathers, a sure sign that director Terry Hands wanted to transport his audience to 17th-century France where Rostand’s 1897 play is set. Anthony Burgess wrote the translation.
There is no evidence that Rostand gave his hero the antisemitic trope of a massive hooter to undermine a prejudice that was particularly prevalent in France. But what is known is that Rostand was a supporter of Dreyfus, the Jewish army officer who was notoriously and falsely accused of treason.
This latest version, also an RSC production, is brimful of Rostand’s humanity and sense of justice. Directed by Simon Evans, it has a creative team that is less grand than the Jacobi production but no less talented. And although it too transports its audience to 17th-century France, it feels vividly and thrillingly modern.
Evans and grime-poet Debris Stevenson are behind the new version of the script, which has a few f-words scattered through it and, rather like Martin Crimp’s new National Theatre version of The Misanthrope by Rostand’s fellow Frenchman Moliére, takes the verse from of the original and makes it sound like 21st-century dialogue.
Not so long ago James McAvoy led a modern street-savvy version (also adapted by Crimp) that did something similar. That show jettisoned everything you might expect from a production of Cyrano, feathers and nose included. Here the renaissance wardrobe is fully present, as is that beak. Behind it is the face of Adrian Lester, who gives the performance of his life. Lester is best known on TV as the smooth as silk star of Hustle. On stage he has been a landmark Henry V at the National, an award-winning Bobby in Sondheim’s Company and is always a glamorous charismatic presence on stage. But here he is painfully gauche when attempting to communicate his love to Susannah Fielding’s urbane and sophisticated Roxane.
His Cyrano cuts an almost Falstaffian figure, even though unlike Shakespeare’s faker, he is as brave and as indestructible as he claims.
What humanises the bravado is not only a crippling shyness in matters of love but a disarming self-deprecating sense of humour. To describe his schnoz Lester’s Cyrano emits the sound of a klaxon that could be a vintage car’s hooter. It is is a stunningly multi-layered performance and is supported by a faultless cast.
As Christian, Levi Brown lends the character more depth than I have seen. Often characterised as a blameless fellow who is as good-looking as he is shallow, Brown’s version is a farmer whose powerfully argues that love is not banter or verse but a conjoined thing illustrated by the powerful image of hands together in the soil.
Fielding’s Roxane is also outstanding. Brimful of life in the first half, grief drains her of the stuff even while she is still, and has always has been, unknowingly in the presence of the man she loves. To this, the play’s transitions between peace and war are handled with a remarkably elegant use of lighting that illustrates the play’s humanist and anti-war spirit. It is enough to make you cry.
Cyrano De Bergerac
Noël Coward Theatre
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