Word: cyrano
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Cyrano de Bergerac (translated from the French of Edmond Rostand by Brian Hooker; produced by Jose Ferrer) drops in on each new generation-Walter Hampden accompanied it in the '20s-as a reminder that high romance once lived in the world, or at any rate in the theater. Brightly tricked out, Cyrano is always welcome, for it offers playgoers the satisfaction of witnessing a "classic" and at the same time reveling in shameless sentiment, noble gestures and high theatrical hokum...
...smartly tricked out last week. No production can keep Cyrano from seeming far too long, or press out all its wrinkles. But last week's production was robust and properly flamboyant; its duel, for instance, looked like a real duel. And its Cyrano - who is after all the whole show - was a good Cyrano. Jose Ferrer (who has ranged on Broadway from a hilarious Charley's "aunt" to an impressive lago) caught the human being in Cyrano as well as the ham. As the monstrous-nosed, self-sacrificing lover who eloquently poured out his feeling for the beautiful...
Against the background of the vivid, swirling gaiety of Moliere's and d'Artagnan's France, Cyrano is the manipulated story of a rapier-wielding, poetry-spouting wit who lets his nose get in the way of his love affairs. An iconoclast, embattled against a pedantic society, he sweeps all before him except the final prize, the ivory-fair Roxane. His winning love speeches he puts into the mouth of a handsome dolt, for her sake. The motif is noble, yet it shrinks to the simple moral that it takes more than a sharp tongue, a sharper sword...
Enter Ferrer, a rare genius in the American theatre. This is the man who made Margaret Webster's Othello with his real and living Iago. He has at least equalled that triumph with Cyrano. This character, plagued by an obscene nose, must be "all things." After the first act, Ferrer makes the spectator forget that nose. Declaiming with high spirit, he leaves the audience gasping at the arched flight of his slick patter. He is meant to be a swashbuckler, and Ferrer gives it everything as he swaggers and gesticulates in the mixed role of philosopher, poet, soldier, and self...
When he made Cyrano's ugliness so prominent, Rostand took a chance on slipping over into the ridiculous. Ferrer's production strikes the delicate balance between pomposity and farce. At rare moments in the comic scenes there is an overstraining after effect, but this can be blamed on the script. It is when Rostand tries to be another Shakespeare or Racine that the play loses its dash. The death of Christian, the puppet lover, and the end of Cyrano himself in a nunnery are on the edge of ennui. Written at a time when audiences liked their melodrama lush...