MAC ROARS BACK
McAvoy’s Cyrano is a rapping delight: athletic, poetic... and with a normal size nose
Cyrano de Bergerac (NT Live in cinemas) Verdict: James McAvoy is a revelation ★★★ Present Laughter (NT Live in cinemas) Verdict: Andrew Scott in comic blitzkrieg★★★★
WHISPER it, but theatre is slowly coming out of its shell. A Zoom play here, a car park comedy there, and now a couple of West End star turns, getting a run in cinemas around the country.
One is Scot James McAvoy giving his take on the French poet Cyrano de Bergerac. The other is Andrew Scott, in Noel Coward’s comedy Present Laughter.
Cyrano was Edmond Rostand’s French drama about a lovelorn poet and swordsman who winds up wooing his beloved — on behalf of his tongue-tied love rival.
Jamie Lloyd’s production, which sold out almost instantly at the petite Playhouse in the West End last year, is a modern-day update that elects to drop the character’s notoriously huge conk. It could perhaps be dubbed ‘Cyra-no-nose’.
Veteran playwright Martin Crimp has also reworked it as a kind of poetry slam, so the short-fused hero’s duelling gives way to an open-mic rapping contest.
Sadly, that means it loses some of its enchantment, while gaining a lot of profanities (I had to give my ten-year-old her marching orders). But once I’d cleared the room of minors, I was able to admire the Hamilton-esque bravura of Crimp’s rhyming.
The star attraction, though, is McAvoy, who gives an athletic and emotional performance in the title role. It is rather odd that his hunky Glaswegian squaddie should consider himself an ugly duckling doomed to chastity.
But the fun lies in watching him surf the tsunami of Crimp’s verse; and the finest scene is when he impersonates the nasal streetaccent of his tongue-tied rival Christian (Eben Figueiredo). Anita-Joy Uwajeh is a willowy beauty as the object of their ardour. But in her determination to avoid what her character calls the ‘male gaze cliché’, she comes across as a chilly proposition.
Cyrano’s forbidding commanding officer De Guiche is played by master of physical comedy Tom Edden (the teetering waiter from One Man, Two Guvnors); here as serious as a tax return, except in a brilliant beat-boxing showdown.
I’m not sure how it will fare in cinemas, and it does feel a little static, with Soutra Gilmour’s stagy design inside a blank white box dotted with mic stands and stacking chairs.
But there is some bouncy choreography for the rapping contests; and McAvoy is never less than a lyrical lover.
WHAT a treat, too, to get another chance to see Andrew Scott in Noel Coward’s barmy, semi-autobiographical comedy Present Laughter. The plot, if you can call it that, concerns a matinee idol tormented by lovers past, present and future in his London home. Filmed last year at London’s Old Vic, the comedy earned Scott all manner of plaudits.
Subtle it ain’t. Scott’s brilliance was working the audience into a frenzy equal to his own. Ramping and roaring and sounding like he’s forever on the brink of tears of exasperation, he demolishes all he surveys with his histrionics.
But even within this mountaintop register, Scott somehow finds range, from sullen to sarcastic; wily to weepy.
Indira Varma is a cooling influence as his stylish wife; while Sophie Thompson, as his batty secretary, keeps him from flying off the stage altogether.
The production’s USP was to make Scott’s most ardent admirer a man (played by Enzo Cilenti, a Javier Bardem lookalike), in order to lay bare Coward’s sexuality. Matthew Warchus’s production is, however, unmerciful on the eye: a royal blue, Art Deco nightmare of violent angles and vertiginous net curtains. It’s perfectly in keeping with the exaggerated tone, but alongside Scott’s performance, is probably best enjoyed from the back row of your local cinema.
For participating cinemas, go to ntlive.nationaltheatre.org.uk