Cyrano de Bergerac: Plosive Productions’ Current Treatment of this 1897 classic does not care a great deal about style.
There’s a famous scene in the first act of Cyrano de Bergerac when the play’s long-nosed hero delivers an elegantly witty speech on the virtues of his proboscis. He then subjects an insolent young cadet to a duel in which he punctuates the humiliating cuts and thrusts of his blade with the composition of a ballad.
It should be a defining moment in Rostand’s play — a moment which seduces the audience into embracing not only its spirit of unfettered romanticism and unabashed theatrical excess, but also the tragic-comic figure of the poet Cyrano himself.
In Plosive Productions’ current treatment of this 1897 classic, the scene does work — but only just. What should be a set piece sequence offers something less than the irresistible combination of airborne intellect and dashing physicality which the audience has a right to expect at this point. It’s the evening’s first disturbing indication that this is a production which doesn’t care a great deal about style.
Richard Gélinas is a solid actor, but he’s surprisingly cautious and sometimes tentative in his approach to the role of Cyrano. The poet’s passion, even when misplaced, must be there on stage. So must that sense of burning loyalty towards his beloved Roxane even although he and we know she yearns for someone else. He is undeniably an obsessive, but an endearing one. But Gélinas has put himself on too short a leash.
At the Gladstone, the execution of that early scene — the ode to the nose, the duel, the composition of a poem — keeps suggesting a work in progress. And although Gélinas does retain our attention, there’s too much calculation and too little spontaneity here. Where is the flourish which both character and text demand?
Any play which celebrates panache with the fervour of Cyrano de Bergerac needs to have that fundamental raison d’etre properly celebrated on stage. And too often panache is what this production at the Gladstone lacks.
Writer-director David Whiteley has delivered a serviceable translation, with some lovely rhyming moments, but perhaps he needed more rehearsal time to bring his script to fuller fruition. The staging of many scenes — played against an all-purpose set which, in designer Nancy Solman’s hands, resembles a giant letter-holder — seems awkward rather than inspired when it comes to managing the rhythms of this piece. Such is the problem with that important first-act duel, and again with what should be another comic set piece — the sequence where the youthful Christian deliberately interrupts one of Cyrano’s high-flying monologues with insulting references to his nose . Again the potential delights of Rostand’s witty verbal counterpoint are largely squandered.
Gélinas does fare better in that classic scene where, hidden in the shadows, he ends up wooing his beloved Roxane — but only as proxy for her true love, the ineffectual Christian who lacks the words to do the job himself. Gelinas’s sensitive work here finds pathos and poignancy within the very ridiculousness of the situation. And it reveals the painful vulnerability and pained self-awareness lurking beneath Cyrano’s flamboyant exterior. As for his final scene with Élise Gauthier’s sometimes uncertain Roxane, it is a moving portrayal of stoicism in the twilight of life.
Warren Bain finds an element of gauche charm in the youthful Christian, and Chris Ralph has some likeable moments as a baker with poetic aspirations. But the scheming Comte de Guiche’s villainy emerges as somewhat lacklustre in Chris McLeod’s portrayal.
Indeed, there are too many undefined characters in this production; furthermore, the language of a play written in rhyming couplets seems a challenge to some cast members. Also troubling is the lack of ensemble in those scenes requiring a genuine ensemble quality. As for the crucial Act Four, dealing with the siege of Aras, it fails in every way to convince us dramatically of the high stakes involved. We survey those allegedly begrimed and starving cadets and note that their crisp clean uniforms look as though they had just been removed from hangers in the Gladstone’s dressing rooms. And what’s with their well-scrubbed faces?
Ottawa, Jamie Portman,
4 February, 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