Adrian Lester leads a top cast in five-star Cyrano de Bergerac at the RSC’s Swan Theatre
Five stars *****
Cyrano De Bergerac, Swan Theatre, Stratford, until 15th November
“What’s the ugliest part of your body? Some say your nose/ Some say your toes/ But I think it’s your mind…” What’s The Ugliest Part Of Your Body?, The Mothers Of Invention, We’re Only In It For The Money, 1968.
You can find plenty of platitudes crafted to comfort most of us not blessed to be born with the attractive physical attributes of, say, Robert Pattinson, Kate Moss or RuPaul. Stuff like love is blind, and never judge a book by its cover, and beauty being in the eye of the beholder and all that. But the plain fact is that good looks are seldom a hindrance to helping get what you want and, no matter how intelligent or good-hearted you may be, seeing is pretty much always believing. Which, it must be said, has been quite a boon to the creative arts down the centuries, the chasm between the inner psyche and outer appearance providing fertile and well-mined terrain.
Usually, it’s the evil lurking behind the angelic exterior that propels the plot – numerous psycho killers, the cast of Heathers, gorgeous sirens luring lonely sailors to shipwreck, that sort of butter-wouldn’t-melt… situation. But every now and then, albeit not very often, it’s the other way around, the action instigated by an outward ug with an inner glow.
The French, for some reason, seem to go for this angle more than anyone else, like the misshapen Quasimodo, the Hunchback Of Notre Dame, and our hero tonight, the noble Cyrano de Bergerac and his bulbous shnozz. He stars in a play that bears his name, originally written in 1897 by Edmond Rostand, very loosely based on a real 17th century man of means, poet and soldier who actually didn’t have a remarkable hooter. It’s updated for this production by Simon Evans and Debris Stevenson, a rarity to be relished .
The plot’s pretty basic – Cyrano is a swaggering swordsmith with a way with words who is in love with Roxane, a clever, feisty recently-widowed lass he’s known since childhood. Trouble is, he’s so insecure about his facial appendage that he can’t bring himself to declare his affection for fear of rejection. He’s a dashing so-and-so even with the proboscis but he pictures himself as the Elephant Man and there’s no getting over or under it. So, when Roxane takes a fancy to the largely illiterate Christian De Neuvillette, a handsome young country bumpkin fresh arrived in Paris to sign up for a spot of soldiering against the Spanish, Cyrano agrees to woo Roxane for him by proxy, secretly sending her letters full of potent poetry. She falls for the ruse but war intervenes… and that, without giving too much away, is amour-or-less it.
The work’s famous for being concerned with the sadness of unrequited love but here the directive team of adaptive co-writers have made it more about the power of language and how dangerous it is when substituted for action. There are ironies galore: Cyrano is quick into the fray but can’t do the one thing he really should. Christian lacks any verbal finesse but repeatedly utters the three little words that Cyrano can’t. Roxane seeks perfection that doesn’t exist, romanticising herself out of any hope of happiness and even wallowing in it.
Most of all, though, the play as presented is about frustration. It’s one of those Hamlet-like situations where, if the protagonist just got on with it, the characters would be spared a lifetime of exasperation and the audience a couple of hours and more of the same. No-one gets to consummate anything. That said, though, the show’s great.
This is mainly down to the cast who are top-to-bottom exemplary. RSC debutant Adrian Lester plays Cyrano with a classic confidence and an admirable gift for comedy. Did I mention it’s funny? Oh, it is. Very. It revels in its many absurdities. Lester bestrides the stage in an authoritative manner usually reserved for reports of revered thesps of old. Equally adept with the blade and the blather – often simultaneously; he lectures on acrostic whilst putting a foe to the rapier! He roars, he weeps, he mocks… he’s magnificent.
Susannah Fielding’s Roxane is not to be outdone. She’s a force of nature alright, wilful, delightful, a bit of a madam, the match for Cyrano in smarts, convincingly determined in pursuit of her desires. She sparkles, even when she breaks at the realisation that much of her existence has been a deception. “You wasted me,” she cries, and the audience cries along with her.
Gotta say Levi Brown’s got a job on his hands portraying Christian in such stellar company but he sticks to his task as the lad from the shires, his small ambition to return a family man to the seeds and the soil movingly conveyed. It’s a tough gig, though, and it takes some believing that Roxane would actually fall head-over-heels in his direction.
Ancillary characters are unanimously splendid - Scott Handy’s Comte De Guiche a perfectly creepy cavalier with his own designs on the lady, Christian Patterson’s Ragueneau just the kind of larger-than-life, hail-fellow-well-met innkeeper you wish all pub landlords were like, and Philip Cumbus’ Le Bret the sort of sympathetic, tell-it-like-it-is best friend we could all do with.
It would also be remiss not to mention the small band of musicians who wander on and off stage soundtracking scenes to much hilarity. Cyrano won them in a bet over whether it’s correct to say “hung” or “hanged”, the joke being both are perfectly adequate. Yup, it’s that kind of play, often delightful, occasionally sly, cute when Cyrano and Roxane rekindle word games from their youth, and when death does come to visit in the shape of Cyrano as a boy, it is very moving, especially when Cyrano, master of the metaphor, finally loses his grip and has to let go of his beloved language.
Other recent productions have sought to emphasise the psychological – that we all incubate our own damaging inhibitions which limit our potential – by deciding to dispense with the calamitous conk. So, there was a fear that this RSC production might appear a little jaded, old-fashioned even, in comparison. Not so. After a bit of a bumpy start, this is a lively, warm, clear-sighted piece even if, like Measure For Measure which is on next door in the main theatre, it has a propensity to spoon-feed us what we are perfectly capable of deducing for ourselves. We don’t need Christian to tell us Cyrano is scared to admit his love for Roxane. Give us a little intellectual credit, pretty please.
“What is a poem if not a mask,” says Cyrano at one point. Yup, we got it.
To sum it all up, about halfway through, Roxanne says to Cyrano: “You are made of words.”
He replies: ”I have hidden under them all my life.”
You can say that again!
In an accidental piece of serendipitous programming, the RSC returns to the theme of deceptive appearances in a few weeks’ time with its Christmas show, Raold Dahl’s BFG about a massive, scary ogre with a heart of gold. In another of Dahl’s books for kids, The Twits, he wrote: ”A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly. You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth… but if you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.”
Oh, if only that were true.
5 stars