A spirited Cyrano de Bergerac shines at Shaw
Stellar cast, director make this one of the season's highlights
There is an entire generation of people — including Shaw Festival director Chris Abraham — who first encountered the story of “Cyrano de Bergerac” through the 1987 Steve Martin comedy “Roxanne,” a much sweeter and funnier take on the tale.
When you go back to the original 1897 Edmond Rostand play, you’ll find many of the same sentiments in a darker, more complex story. The problem is wading through the original dialogue, told entirely in rhyming couplets of 12 syllables every line.
At nearly three hours long, it can be exhausting to wade through.
Which is why translators have been Cyrano’s best friends through the years, softening this verbose romance into something more charming and relatable. Shaw Festival associate director Kate Hennig takes it even further for this world premiere, giving the play a more modern prose (at one point, Cyrano mutters a sarcastic “as if”) while retaining much of the same poetry Cyrano covertly woos Roxane with.
The result is one of the most charming, audience-pleasing shows of the season, with a monumental turn from Stratford Festival workhorse Tom Rooney in his Shaw debut.
Donning that classic huge honker, Rooney plays the swashbuckler as both cocky and conflicted.
He’s quick to joke about his sniffer (“I, whose nose precedes me by a quarter of an hour”), but his warped self-image prevents him from knowing any happiness. He’s fierce in battle, fumbling around women — especially his cousin Roxane (Deborah Hay), whom he’s head over heels for (weird, I know, but hey ... it’s 1640).
What follows is one of the stage’s most familiar stories — unable to profess his own love for Roxane, Cyrano instead feeds lines to the dashing Christian (Jeff Irving), who Roxane is keen for.
This love triangle reaches its sweet, comical peak with Christian wooing Roxane on her balcony while a hidden Cyrano is whispering what to say.
But if “Cyrano de Bergerac” was played as just a goofy romance, I doubt it would have lingered this long. The play’s second act involves war, heartbreak and an ending that can still wring tears, especially with the stellar cast Abraham has at his disposal.
Beyond the main three, he gets villainous legwork from Patrick Galligan as the army colonel De Guice, who also wants Roxane and aims to remove the competition, and Tanja Jacobs as Cyrano’s loyal sidekick Le Bret. They all provide the kick to Hennig’s snappy adaptation.
This is a show that had high expectations from the moment it was announced last summer, and satisfies on every level.
If anything, the festival might regret not putting it on the main stage — the Royal George Theatre, at just 305 seats, may not accommodate demand for this brief, two-month run.
A nose this big deserves some breathing room.