McAvoy is vividly present a performance on fire.įigueiredo makes Christian an annoyingly lovable himbo, someone who is ultimately worth sparing, but boy is he a tool. In a single speech, he is at turns vulnerable, confident, horny, brooding, a dom, a sub, open, hidden, tongue-tied, and eloquent. McAvoy makes his character a conduit for the feelings he expresses, often shocking himself with the profundity of his humbling love for Roxane. (Shoutout to this production, by the way, for having contemporary actors bring slam sensibilities to an older text without causing even a wink of an eyeroll). McAvoy’s Cyrano is compulsively watchable, with the settled-in vulnerability of his character’s loneliness a fascinating counterpart to his virtuosic ability with words, often delivered through verse, or freestyle. As with her costume designs, which also bring to mind the ease of the best UK athleisure, the production’s technical components create an ideal space for pure theatre, and the cast takes this challenge and shoots past the moon, past the stars, landing in their own galaxy of brilliance. Soutra Gilmour’s scenic design is equally an achievement in economical potency, somewhere between a classical Greek agora and the stunning Brutalism of London’s south bank. The company of Cyrano de Bergerac | Photo: Marc Brenner As with the plot, and the children’s game, the device is clean, legible, and blazingly effective, foregrounding the stellar cast’s absolute mastery over Edmond Rostand’s book, here adapted by Martin Crimp. Rather than hiding the narrative’s absurdities, director Jamie Lloyd leans in, most ingeniously by staging that balcony scene as a game of musical chairs. There is, of course, a balcony scene in which a somehow-hidden Cyrano feeds Christian sweet nothings to relay, in real time, to their clueless beloved. Seeing this as his only opportunity to engage with her on a romantic level, Cyrano begins ghostwriting the dim-witted trainee’s side of their love letters. Though a witty nobleman as confident in his dueling skills as he is in his poetic wordsmanship, Cyrano’s hideousness (not pictured) keeps him from professing his love to the beautiful Roxane (Evelyn Miller), who falls lustily for handsome new cadet, Christian (Eben Figueiredo). life), is simple to the point of verging on the ridiculous. The story, as with most of these tried-and-true classics (and. Starring a breathtaking James McAvoy as its lovelorn lead, this British transfer from The Jamie Lloyd Company strips the material down to the essential-the sword by which everyone in its 1640 Paris must live or die: the power of words. Following a disappointing recent film adaptation, which garnished its well-known plot with flowery songs and period detail, I was not expecting a production of Cyrano de Bergerac to be the sexiest, most thrilling production of the season.
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