New Haven Register (Sunday) (New Haven, CT)
Dinklage leads scaled-down, ambitious new ‘Cyrano’
Members of indie band The National join in creating Terris Theatre musical
“This is not your father’s Rostand.” So said Tom Riis Farrell, who plays Ragueneau, among other roles, in “Cyrano,” a new musical adaptation of Edmond Rostand’s 1897 classic play “Cyrano de Bergerac” that opened Friday night at Goodspeed Musicals’ Terris Theatre in Chester.
“It’s not Rostand,” Farrell added.
Even a passing glance at Goodspeed’s new production suggests that Farrell has a gift for understatement. The title “Cyrano de Bergerac” conjures anticipation of gracefully crafted verse dialogue, swashbuckling, verbal jousting and unrequited love, and a titular hero with a proboscis that makes Jimmy Durante look like Voldemort. In short, going for Baroque.
For starters, “Game of Thrones” star Peter Dinklage plays Cyrano, a role customarily played by more traditional leading men than Dinklage (Kevin Kline starred on Broadway in the role back in 2007).
The other physical contrast is Goodspeed’s relatively intimate cast of only 10 performers (Kline’s production engaged 27).
“It’s very scaled down,” said Farrell. “There’s no verse dialogue. There’s no reference to France, in general. Peter Dinklage is not wearing the nose. I think his stature is standing in for the … oddness of (Cyrano),” he said.
“Cyrano,” which continues through Sept. 9, also introduces four members of the Emmy-wining indie alternative band The National to the world of musical theater: twin brothers Aaron and Bryce Dessner compose the music, and Matt Berninger and Carin Besser are its lyricists.
According to Bryce Dessner, director-playwright Erica Schmidt, who previously worked with Dinklage Off-Broadway in Classic Stage Company’s production of “A Month in the Country,” bore the idea of adapting Rostand’s masterpiece as such.
“She had been working on adapting ‘Cyrano’ for many, many years,” said Dessner, adding that he and his band-
mates first met with Schmidt in her upstate New York home to hear her script and concept for such a collaboration.
“In hearing that, I thought it could be interesting,” he said, describing Schmidt as “the engine” driving the project. “She had a sense of where songs could be useful. So we did four workshops, I believe, where we worked on various versions of the songs. We revised the music and eventually that was kind of extended last week while we were at the Goodspeed working with the actual cast. And even then, we were developing the piece — changing small things with orchestration.”
Dessner, a graduate of Yale School of Music whose composing style lies somewhere between traditional Bach and avant garde Steve Reich, said this is his first musical theater project, with a caveat.
“In terms of traditional music theater, in a way, ‘Cyrano’ isn’t really a musical,” he said. “It’s more a play with music underscore, with songs. It’s not a full-on (musical). It’s an incredible piece of theater with songs.”
Farrell’s observation that many of Cyrano’s lengthy speeches remain in Schmidt’s adaptation, only in musical prose rather than rhymed couplets.
“Peter has bitten off an enormous amount here,” said Farrell, who previously appeared in Long Wharf Theatre’s productions of “Rag and Bone” and “Picasso at the Lapin Agile.”
“He’s speaking all of the time,” he said. “And he’s such a good actor! It’s staggering. His first diatribe is almost a rap number.”
Dessner, who has written scores for several films and composed for ballet and various orchestral groups, explained how this project differs from scoring a film.
“In a movie, you’re not brought in before it’s finished,” he said. “You’re kind of relating to an existing story line and you’re helping support that story line where, in this case, along with Erica Schmidt, we’re the creators of this project, so we’ve been involved from very early on. She was writing the text and we were doing the music, so it’s interesting, It’s nice to be involved in the whole process, I guess. The songs themselves really inform the narrative, in a way, instead of just playing a supporting role.”
Dessner has heard the adage that creating a musical theater piece is far more collaborative than other musical forms. Yet Dessner, who has co-composed with his brother since the twins were lads, said that working on “Cyrano” was not that different than producing an album, writing a ballet or scoring a film.
“We have a very fluid way of working together where we share musical ideas and finish each other’s phrases, which is really fun,” he said. “We both generate a lot of musical ideas, some of which are the underscore. The entire play pretty much has a score, which, in a way, is like a film score. Then there’s 12, 13 composed songs, and all of that music is orchestrated.”
The challenge, Dessner said, is composing songs for Rostand’s many characters, as opposed to writing specifically for Berninger, The National’s lead vocalist.
“For us, writing songs has always been really personal and kind of Matt’s voice,” said Dessner. “And so adapting those songs for other voices, that’s been the big, most interesting thing. In a way, they become more powerful because they’re songs that can sit on other people’s voices. That’s been the challenge — to make songs bigger, to give the songs a kind of openness about them that they can work in various settings. To the credit of the cast, they do an incredible job of singing them.”
Farrell aptly summed up how Rostand’s antique, romantic weeper continues to resonate soundly with a more jaded, contemporary audiences.
“I don’t think that the notion of falling in love and not feeling good enough to be loved by that person is restricted with time,” said Farrell. “And we’ve all experienced that: ‘Oh, that person is so way out of my league.’ In a way — in a very sad way — you know, it’s nice for this person to have, in the very last moments of his life, the object of his unspoken desire say ‘I love you.’ I mean, it’s tragic and awful, but at the same time, he got to hear it before he died.
“We all would like to have that happen. I mean, not
right before we die, possibly, but in that moment of ‘Oh my God! I’m not, you know, insufficient to deserve this person.’”