ajhlovestheatre

CYRANO

by Virginia Gay, after Edmond Rostand

directed by Clare Watson 

Park Theatre, London – until 11 January 2025

https://parktheatre.co.uk/event/cyrano/

Edmond Rostand’s big-nosed, poetry spouting swashbuckler gets a gay, feminist makeover in this delightful update, and it’s one of the most life-enhancing things on any current London stage. Author and star (although Cyrano is very much an ensemble piece), Australian multi-hyphenate Virginia Gay takes Rostand’s beloved, but increasingly problematic, tale and drags it, not so much kicking and screaming as giggling and winking, into the 21st century, with illuminating results.

Refocusing Cyrano, the scholar, bon viveur and wit, always “the most interesting person in the room”, as a high achieving, slightly intimidating, queer outsider makes perfect sense. This Cyrano is popular and charismatic, but she feels like an observer, a bystander, watching other people’s lives but not fully participating in her own by dint, she thinks, of her facial abnormality: as with the acclaimed Jamie Lloyd-James McAvoy modernisation a few years ago, there’s no prosthetic nose, just plenty of textual reminders.

Gay’s Cyrano is irresistibly funny and warm, but the vein of melancholy running through her is keenly felt, as is the sudden, shocking aggression that comes to the fore in moments of conflict or sheer frustration at the idiocy of her intellectual inferiors (Tanvir Virmani’s adorably kookie chorus member is a regular recipient of her ire). Gay’s is a complex, psychologically acute portrayal that honours Rostand’s original creation while making this Cyrano very much her own woman. Crucially, we care about her very much right from the beginning.

Equally her own woman is Jessica Whitehurst’s terrific Roxanne. Far from the cosseted princess of Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac, she is a sexy, self aware, feisty young woman who’s kind but doesn’t suffer fools gladly. It’s all too easy to see why Cyrano and Christian, the soldier whose flawless exterior doesn’t match the apparent command of poetic language that makes Roxanne weak at the knees, fall for her.

Yan – short for Christian – is played as a muscular, bluntly spoken Mancunian, more brawn than brains, but not without sensitivity. Joseph Evans renders his cluelessness surprisingly charming, and makes something really touching out of the realisation that Roxanne will never love his authentic self as much as he wants and needs her to. 

The choric trio that sets the scene and comments on the action, and on the choices of the principal characters, is another source of joy. Virmani’s gauche youngster, rampantly hot for Yan and unable to remember her own name when challenged, Tessa Wong’s cute bossyboots and David Tarkenter’s world weary old stager, all have shining comic moments and make a wonderfully mismatched team.

To house this freewheeling, consistently enchanting riff on a classic, Gay and director Clare Watson have created a slightly unhinged, supremely theatrical world, one where the improbable just keeps happening. It’s a milieu where the austerity of a bare stage transforms into a hedonistic dancefloor in the blink of an eye, where the company gathered around a battered old piano unexpectedly breaks into exquisite multiple part harmony versions of pop songs, where an apparently buttoned-up cast member suddenly and hilariously starts expressing himself via interpretive dance, and where the entire audience find themselves as party guests, decked out with streamers and paper hats, while glitter falls from the flies. The sense of goodwill and lunatic magic makes the genuinely dramatic moments fall into sharp, potent relief. This is a play and production that satisfies on every level.

That’s especially true of the central plot development where Cyrano and Christian effectively gaslight Roxanne into falling for the latter. It may have felt romantic and noble in Rostand’s day but it doesn’t play so well in the age of #MeToo. Whitehurst’s fury and disappointment when she discovers the duplicity is authentically powerful. When one of the chorus asks what happens next, Gay’s Cyrano, with a combination of sullenness and shame, mutters “I die so she has to forgive me”. Mercifully that’s not the fate of this poetic dreamer and a tragedy is turned into a celebration of self realisation and forgiveness.

Gay’s script is a wondrous thing, riotously funny when it seeks to be but emotionally deft. It’s also tremendously erotic. With the highly amusing interjections from the chorus, this Cyrano is as much an examination of the nature of theatrical storytelling as it is a reinvention of the beloved romantic classic. 

Watson’s intimate staging, a smash hit at the Edinburgh Festival this year and it’s easy to see why, is bold and inventive, slick enough for us to know we’re in the hands of real artists but rough-around-the-edges enough to ensure moments of real surprise, and it moves at a cracking pace. Andy Purves’s mood-shifting lighting, Toby Young’s sound, Amanda Stoodley’s unfussy designs and Paul Herbert’s glorious musical direction all combine with staging and performances to create the impression of that rare, exhilarating theatrical beast where everyone involved is singing from the same joyous hymn-sheet.

The ninety magical minutes fly by, you’ll laugh a lot, maybe cry a little, and emerge uplifted with a fresh perspective on a well known story and unequivocally fall in love with this cast. As much as a love story and a queer affirmation, it’s an exhortation to grab life by the balls. At the conclusion, I had tears in my eyes and couldn’t wipe the soppy grin off my face: I simply cannot recommend this highly enough.