Word: rostand
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, try ignoring Roxanne. It is a sleeper summer hit, Martin's biggest since The Jerk. It is based on an honorable property, Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac. It dares to plump for the supremacy of two old-fashioned notions: romantic love as the meeting of true minds and the English language as a tool for wooing and wonder. The script challenges its star to be at once noble and fatuous, strong and swooning, utterly in control and desperately in love -- all of which Martin handles as gracefully as if he'd written it himself (which...
...become Chris' voice and soul, whispering the music of love for Chris to shout up to Roxanne's balcony . . . But you've heard this story before. It is Cyrano de Bergerac replanted in rural Washington State. Chivalric C.D. is no swordsman; he duels with tennis racquet and walking stick. Rostand's purple poetry is replaced with C.D.'s Hallmarkian attempt to turn palship into passion: "Why should we sip from a teacup when we can drink from the river...
Cyrano de Bergerac By Edmund Rostand Translated from the French by Brian Hooker Directed by Brian Backus At the Leverett House Old Library Through...
Director Brian Backus has attacked Edmund Rostand's classic tragicomedy with a battleaxe, only he seems to hit the wrong parts, at least for this production. Blessed with a cast stronger in comic than tragic talents, Backus unwisely cuts the hilarious first act and plays down much of the humor in favor of the tragic, or in this case, bathetic parts. Alex Roe's Cyrano is the major casualty of this approach, though, to be fair, some of his wounds are self-inflicted. He seems to drone endlessly, eyes glazed and fingers fidgeting, in a voice that ought to earn...
...that the play is unworthy of resuscitation. Edmond Rostand was 29 when he wrote Cyrano; he seasoned this tale of a 17th century cavalier with the dash, sweep, idealism and tireless eloquence of youth. In 1898, when the original French production played London, it arrived like a gust of rose-scented air in the stolid cathedral of naturalism. Proclaimed Critic Max Beerbohm: "Even if Cyrano be not a classic, it is at least a wonderfully ingenious counterfeit of one." And even if, in this century, the counterfeit has become more evident than the ingenuity, Rostand's rhapsody has attracted...