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Cyrano de Bergerac

  • opened: 4/19/2004
  • closed: -
  • National Theatre, Olivier
  • Box Office: 020 7452 3000
  • Details: To June 24 2004
  • Summary: Visit theARCHIVE to hear a theatreVOICE discussion. Edmond Rostand's romantic classic about the bulbous-nosed soldier-poet who must suffer in torment as he helps a doltish rival woo the woman he loves using his own heartfelt verse - hasn't strayed out of the repertoire since 1900, when it was first staged in London. Now Howard Davies revives it again, this time as part of the National's £10 Travelex season, with Stephen Rea taking the starring role, in a production the director has admitted came with a budget of a mere £65,000. The critical feedback has been far from positive. In the Guardian, Michael Billington was grudging: 'It just about works because the play is indestructible. But I can't help feeling there is something a touch perverse about a rough theatre version of Rostand's romantic melodrama in a theatre the size of the Olivier: for once, I found myself craving a bit more colour and spectacle. In the Times, Benedict Nightingale had his niggles but was more impressed: 'William Dudley has assembled a curious set: wheeled tiers of steel that suggest an austere jungle-gym or maybe a vast hospital trolley for a misshapen giant. It bends and swivels, rather like its counterpart in Les Mis, but one has to work hard to imagine that it's a barrack-room, a Paris theatre or a convent garden. Nevertheless, there's energy, and narrative momentum and, at times, fun.' In the Daily Telegraph, Charles Spencer suggested: 'There is so much that is wrong with the staging that Rea's natural talent is rarely allowed to shine as brightly as it should, and he never quite succeeds, as every great Cyrano should, in breaking your heart. Just as things are getting touching, there's another bout of directorial gimmickry to contend with - accordion folk bands keep wandering on to the stage for no apparent reason - or yet another verbal infelicity from the cloth-eared Mahon.' In the Independent, Paul Taylor was blunt: 'Howard Davies's new National revival - the first in this year's admirable Travelex £10 season in the Olivier - is, alas, only calculated to make you weep tears of frustration. It's a waste of money, time and space, and of the talents of the wonderful Stephen Rea. Despite the fact that he once played Oscar Wilde very well, this actor is temperamentally best suited to the dryly comic, the deflationary, the compellingly hangdog... To assign him the role of Rostand's swordsman-poet, is to ask one of nature's undercutters to pretend that he has a psychological compulsion to soar.' In the Daily Mail, Patrick Marmion awarded two stars: 'There is no tragedy without a powerfully charismatic Cyrano to sweep Roxane and the audience off their feet. Rea's bloke-next-door quality has served him well in films such as The Crying Game, but here he is just a nice guy cursed with bad luck and a giant schnozzle.' In the Daily Express, Robert Gore-Langton complained: 'Totally missing is the wit and romantic grandeur of the war-torn melodrama in which Cyrano secretly woos Roxane on behalf of her tongue-tied beau, Christian... Cyrano's dying revelation at the end - that it was really his own heart that he poured into Roxane's ear - usually has the audience sobbing uncontrollably into their programmes. But in this there wasn't a sniffle to be heard.' In the Evening Standard, Nicholas de Jongh was damning: 'Derek Mahon's version of the play is no match for the witty, soaring eloquence of Anthony Burgess's adaptation for the RSC production with Derek Jacobi 20 years ago. It plunges the action into an anachronistic No Man's Land, rather akin to the First World War, where 21st-century yob-speak and decorous rhyming couplets are rudely yoked together. For the first time since Nicholas Hytner triumphantly took over, the National veers wildly off-form.' The Mail on Sunday's Georgina Brown thought Davies' whole approach 'rough and wrong-headed'.. 'Without a doubt this marvellous, romantic play is best served with lashings of swash and buckle, and it gets none of it here.' In the Observer, Susannah Clapp was more approving: 'Davies aims to show that Cyrano's attraction lies in his power as a rebel truth-teller, an independent spirit among the fashionable. He doesn't always succeed and the production is often slow, working against the grain of the play, but it has a fine clarity and intensity.' John Gross in the Sunday Telegraph sniffed: 'I have read poems by Mahon that I admire, including the famous Disused Shed in Co Wicklow but on this occasion he is writing with his boots. No production could hope to overcome such a text but a good one might at least struggle against it.' Visit theARCHIVE to hear a theatreVOICE discussion.
  • Author: Edmond Rostand / Derek Mahon
  • Director: Howard Davies
  • Composer: Dominic Muldowney
  • Lyricist: Set Designer: William Dudley
  • Lighting Designer: Paul Anderson
  • Costume Designer: John Bright
  • Choreographer: Christopher Bruce
  • Cast Details: Stephen Rea (Cyrano); Claire Price (Roxane); Zubin Varla (Christian); Malcolm Storry (Count de Guiche).