Finding Mr Write
CYRANO Cert 12A ★★★★ In cinemas now
If you’ve seen Gerard Depardieu or Steve Martin’s take on the big-nosed Frenchman, you’ll know where this musical version is heading. But Peter Dinklage still makes us yearn for a happy ending in this handsome, tuneful and unusually mournful take on Edmond Rostand’s 1897 play.
Fantasy fans will recognise Dinklage as the series-stealing Tyrion Lannister from Game of Thrones. His Cyrano is cut from the same cloth – a proud, sharp-witted soldier cursed with a tender heart and a wounded soul. Dinklage uses those mournful eyes and pained smiles to heartbreaking effect.
Adapted from an off-Broadway musical from Erica Schmidt (Dinklage’s wife) by Atonement director Joe Wright, Cyrano marks the unlikely musical debut of downbeat US indie band The National.
In this version, it’s Cyrano’s diminutive stature, not a colossal conk, that makes him feel unworthy of the love of Roxanne (Wright’s wife Haley Bennett).
The rest of the story is so familiar, it’s barely worth repeating. It’s 17th-century France and soldier poet Cyrano de Bergerac is secretly pining for aristocratic beauty Roxanne, who is being courted by Ben Mendelsohn’s evil nobleman. When he discovers she is in love with his handsome but inarticulate comrade Christian (Kelvin Harrison Jr), Cyrano offers to pen love letters in his name, seeking an outlet for his own lovelorn feelings.
As in Tom Hooper’s Les Misérables, Wright recorded the songs live using actors unblessed with Broadway-quality voices. Dinklage’s wavering baritone works beautifully with The National’s understated melodies and gives Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s choreography and Wright’s painterly compositions a naturalistic edge.
Fans of Andrew Lloyd Webber may find Wright’s first musical a confounding concoction. There are no jazz hands but it might just break your heart.
His diminutive stature makes him feel unworthy of the love of Roxanne