Cyrano de Bergerac : a good translation but a staging difficult to defend.
David Whiteley should be congratulated for his translation of one of the world’s great theatre classics.
Theatre translation, as an art form, has not been given the attention it deserves, from people who analyse plays in this country, given the need for translations between the two official languages that allow all plays to circulate from one linguistic group to the other. The Centre des auteurs dramatiques (CEAD) in Montreal even works regularly with Mexican translators to encourage exchanges between plays from Quebec and from Mexico, an important initiative that was highlighted by a special issue on Canadian Theatre (English and French) published by the Cuban theatre review Conjunto in 2009. A group of us contributed articles about the theatres in this country for the benefit of Hispanophone readers throughout the Americas.
Behind this activity there exist a vast number of theories of translation that guide and orient the translators according to their intentions. Are they trying to remain as “faithful” as possible to the original? Are they trying to capture what the author “intended”? Does the translator try to capture something “universal”. Is the translator responding firstly to the expectations of a contemporary audience even if it means changing the original radically? Because of all the different possibilities, translations easily slide into adaptations. All of these are of course acceptable and nothing is really “wrong” as long as the translator is aware of his or her own particular process.
David Whiteley’s translation is very clearly responding to what he sees as the expectations of the Plosive Theatre audience. Such expectations might be considered condescending by some standards, very good by others but it is still his own perception of what the audience wants . The result is a play that removes all the cultural and historical context that makes for the spicy background of the play (the theatrical rivalries between 17th Century theatre companies, the critique of the overblown acting styles so dear to Corneille represented by Montfleury which they do not capture at all, the class conflict as portrayed within the theatre milieu, the literary movements of the day, especially “les Précieux”, the foppish and arrogant marquis, the contemporary poets, and a lot more.) All the riotous satire is gone. Too bad. But Plosive could not have afforded to pay such an enormous cast anyway.
What Whiteley does retain is the human essence of the play, the main soliloquies, the great speeches that reveal the passionately playful and love torn soul of the great Cyrano whom Rostand has transformed into a belated Romantic hero of French theatre who lives by his wit, his literary talent and his Panache, his great theatrical style that turns every one of his manifestations of .’bravour’ into a magnificent over the top performance. He is the incarnation of the theatre, of a swashbuckling and dashing swordsman….and image of the hero, except for his nose. But thanks to his nose the plot thickens and it becomes the perfect theatrical device.
His difficult relationship with the love of his life, because of his long ugly nose…. is lived vicariously through Christian, the handsome young man who has no gift for words at all. Roxane, a foppish but beautiful creature of the “précieux” literary movement, only wants to hear beautiful metaphors, overflowing images dripping with multiple levels of overbearing baroque expression. Cyrano is a poet. He knows what she wants and it isn’t until the very end that, stripped of all that fussy language, the purity of Cyrano’s last letter strikes Roxane’s heart and makes her realize what she was really hearing…but by then it was too late.
Whiteley’s language is a mixture of contemporary slang and more eloquent English that all fits into the Alexandrines (the 12 foot lines that characterized French neo classical theatre) that Rostand uses uncharacteristically at the end of the 19th Century and that Whiteley manages to translate quite well into English in 2012.
Whiteley’s text therefore can be defended. However, his staging can not!
The cast wanders on and off in such a nonchalant way that we wonder if they know where they are going. The staging has no continuity of style and that is unforgiveable in a play that is not at all a realistic event, (defined by psychological motivation) but a highly stylized piece of theatre which reflects literary styles that are long gone. One could have transformed this play into contemporary psychological drama. That might even have been fun, trying to elicit all the emotional reactions around each character but that would have been a completely different play with a different tone and the changes in the text would have been a lot more substantial. I have seen Molière’s satire Tartuffe transformed into an angry political , pre-revolutionary drama that scared the pants of the audience, but that director was a master of “style” and knew what acting devices were needed to create a quasi-realistic political staging.
This production lacks any sense of style at all. The director just lets the actors go to it, reacting the way they want and as a result, all the great monologues sink into a terrible sloppiness. There is the Siege of Arras where Roxane appears as if nothing were happening and it all spirals down into total indifference. There is the first scene where Cyrano’s challenge to Montfleury, is quickly forgotten given no appropriate response, even though it eventually leads to the famous monologue about his epic NOSE. Gélinas tried valiantly to do something with his lines and I’m convinced that with a real director he might have succeeded but he was given no support here at all as to how this could have been given more “panache», more stylistic energy of the kind a romantic hero might bring to this amazing moment. Especially during the balcony scene (Romeo and Juliet is nearby obviously). Gélinas created moments that were touching, especially when he took over the poetry from Christian and poured out his heart to his love on the balcony. Still, he needed the strong hand of the director to bring out all the passion, all the energy, all the emotion that is in those lines and that this performance stifled.
The different levels of acting competence were also a big challenge and it was clear that several of the people on stage should not have been there. Warren Blain as Christian tried his best and I feel that with a strong director he also might have succeeded, but Chris McLeod as De Guiche had great difficulty with his role. Garrett Quirk was a fine saucy Garrett Quirk- he couldnt miss and Ragueneau (Chris Ralph) seemed rather uncomfortable in spite of his good efforts. Élise Gauthier (Roxane) caught a certain feeling in the final scene but that balcony scene was very weak and right from the beginning, she certainly did not have the confidence of a beautiful young “précieuse”, arrogant, and carefree, the woman that the most eligible men were courting . And all the while I kept asking myself…where was the director?
At times I had the uncomfortable feeling I was watching a very ambitious high school production. The moments with the Mousquetaires were “fun” and caught a certain atmosphere of male bonding that was the spirit of those royal guards..even if they were contemporary fellows fooling around without the hint of what they were doing on stage. That beautiful song that appeared to be in Langue d’oc (or in Gascon dialect) was a fine moment of peace in a sea of confusion and mediocrity.
Cyrano de Bergerac plays until February 18 at The Gladstone Theatre.
Ottawa, Alvina Ruprecht
February 7, 2012
Cyrano de Bergerac
A Plosive Theatre Production
By Edmond Rostand
Translated, adapted and directed by: David Whiteley
Assistant director: Lucy Collingwood
Set designer, scenic artist and costume designer: Nancy Solman
Lighting designer: John Solman
Nose designer: Zach Counsil
Fight Choreography: National Stage Combat Training Partners (Chris McLeod and John Brogan)
Properties designer: Rachel-Dawn Wallace
Stage manager: Jess Preece
Master carpenter: Peter C. Wilson
Production assistant: Teri Loretto Valentik
Costume mistress: Anna Lindgren
Sound designer: Fiona Currie
Sound board operator: Jonah Lerner
Assistant stage managers: Vronique Nolin and Emily Pearce
CAST
Cryano: Richard Gélinas
Roxane: Élise Gauthier
Christian: Warren Bain
Comte de Guiche: Chris McLeod
Ragueneau: Chris Ralph
Le Bret: Stewart Matthews
D’Artagnan, Cadet: Scott Humphrey
Concessions Gril, Liste, SIster Marthe: Katie Bunting
Lignère Jodelet, Cadet, Friar: Garrett Quirk
Duenna, Mother Marguerite: Robin Guy
Vicomte de Valvert, Cadet: Tim Oberholzer
Montfleury, Cadet: Zach Counsil