CYRANO DE BERGERAC To 30 May.
Chichester.
CYRANO DE BERGERAC
by Edmund Rostand translated and adapted by Anthony Burgess.
Chichester Festival Theatre To 30 May 2009.
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat 21, 23, 27, 20 May 2pm.
Audio-described 22 May, 23 May 2pm, 27 May 2pm, 29 May.
BSL Signed 27 May 7.30pm.
Runs 3hr 15min One interval.
TICKETS: 01243 781312.
www.cft.org.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 18 May.
Hero’s humanity shines through.
Trevor Nunn wanted to direct an epic play with heightened language on Chichester’s big stage. Yet, strangely, this Cyrano works best in individual performances and detail rather than crowd panoramas.
Within crowds, details stand out – two boys miming a swordfight after Cyrano’s bravura duel; Paul Grunert’s baker Ragueneau, having brought supplies to the Gascon army, sitting terrified, clasping the wheels of his carriage when the shooting starts.
Chiefly there’s Joseph Fiennes’ Cyrano, a poet-soldier in 1640s France, admired by many, hated by others who dare not attack him openly. Panache is Cyrano’s last word in Anthony Burgess’s fine translation and Fiennes shows it throughout. Yet he shows too the dissatisfaction beneath Cyrano’s grand actions. For all his qualities, he cannot forget the physical disfiguration of his outsized nose.
Then there’s the irony that this poet, who speaks and writes almost obsessive love-letters to his cousin Roxane by proxy, through the handsome but inarticulate Christian, eventually realises he might have inspired her love himself. Fiennes can do the swaggering action, but it's enriched by his moments of quiet inner turbulence – all the stronger for being so quiet they hardly rise above the bodily equivalent of a whisper.
As his nemesis for much of the action, Scott Handy’s De Guiche is a nervily arrogant aristocrat. Handy captures perfectly the insolence of an officer whose men have no confidence in him, taking suppressed delight in handing them to the enemy, his hard-maintained surface control on the edge of explosion from anger underneath.
Though her hair goes dutifully mousy and her figure seems to fill-out in the last act, 15-years on, Alice Eve’s Roxane is less convincing here She’s not helped by the staging, though there's a fine autumnal spareness with russet leaves occasionally dropping in Robert Jones’ setting. Roxane’s casualness towards her now-regular visitor continues overlong. Surely she’d not look so determinedly the other way, even if she has to not notice his wound for some time. Satisfying enough hitherto, Roxane here seems self-absorbed then emptily rhetorical in her shock.
Still, Cyrano’s the hero here, and Fiennes’ human complexity fittingly makes the play.
Doorkeeper/Carbon: Gary Oliver.
Cavalryman/Poet/Cadet/Actor: Peter Hinton.
2nd Marquis/Cadet: Tom Andrews.
Musketeer/Poet/Cadet: Ross Armstrong.
Flunkey/Bellerose/Poet/Cadet: Jim Creighton.
Flunkey/Actor/Apprentice/Cadet: Tommy Luther.
Guard/Valvert/Actor/Cadet: Jonathan Forbes.
Flower Girl/Lise/Mother Marguerite: Louise Bangay.
Drunkard/Cook/Poet/Cadet: Joseph Chance.
Fat Man/Montfleury/Cook/Poet/Sentry: Sion Tudor Owen
Citizen/Cook/Writer/Spanish Officer: David Weston.
Citizen’s Son: Grant Harris/George Goldsmid.
Pickpocket/Jodelet/Man of Letters/Capuchin Monk: Julian Forsyth.
Boys/Pages: Ben Duncan-Duggal, Freddie Burgess/Joe Duncan-Duggal, Sam Robinson.
Foodseller/Sister Claire: Jo Herbert.
Marquis/Musketeer/Cadet: Laurence Spellman.
Marquis/Cadet: Tom Andrews.
Cuigy/Sentry: Jack James.
Ligniere/Cook/Cadet: Richard Trinder.
Christian de Neuvillette: Stephen Hagan.
Ragueneau: Paul Grunert.
Le Bret: Shane Atwooll.
Roxane: Alice Eve.
Duenna: Tilly Blackwood.
De Guiche: Scott Handy.
Cyrano: Joseph Fiennes.
Community cast: Sarah Blackford, Peter Coxon, Owen Ford, Charlie Hancock, Hugo Jackson, Mike Jupp, Eleanor Marsden, Mark Newton, Robert Skillicorn, Georgette Woolgar, Matthew Wright.
Director: Trevor Nunn.
Designer: Robert Jones.
Lighting: Tim Mitchell.
Sound: John Leonard.
Music: Steven Edis.
Costume: Lynette Mauro.
Fight director: Malcolm Ranson.
Associate director: Joe Harmston.
Assistant director: Michael Oakley.
2009-05-19 18:25:08