Evelyn Miller (Roxane) & James McAvoy (Cyrano)
(Picture: Marc Brenner)If anything, this breathtakingly thrilling production by Jamie Lloyd - and the tour-de-force central performance by James McAvoy as the eponymous, big-nosed soldier-poet - have only become deeper and richer since the 2019 premiere. Maybe the last two years have made its themes of separation and loss more profound.
Lloyd and writer Martin Crimp update Edmond Rostand’s verse drama, written in 1897 and set in 1640, into a rap-inflected urban romantic tragedy. It’s acted with microphones under stark lighting on an almost-bare stage by an ethnically and physically diverse cast in modern dress. It’s bracingly theatrical, richly romantic, deliciously funny, wrenchingly sad: true to modern London yet also faithful to the Parisian original.
Complex ideas about love, literature, body image and truth are layered into Crimp’s beguiling, irregular rhymes; he even acknowledges his and Lloyd’s cultural appropriation of street argot, hip-hop stylings and beatboxing. A compact and powerful McAvoy uses his own Glaswegian accent, and his own movie-star nose, underlining how ugly the swaggering Cyrano considers himself.
The story of a man wooing the woman he loves on behalf of his stupidly handsome friend has been adapted many times on stage and performed on film by everyone from Gerard Depardieu to Steve Martin to Peter Dinklage (in Joe Wright’s imminent musical version). In McAvoy’s interpretation, charm and swagger cover suppressed rage and bottomless sorrow.
The scene where he woos Evelyn Miller’s queenly Roxane in the voice of Eben Figueiredo’s Christian is subtly, powerfully erotic, his rap-duels essays in panache. There’s even a delicate romantic tension between Cyrano and Christian, contrasted with the homoerotic hijinks of soldiers in barracks.
This is an ensemble piece and a work of total theatre, not a star vehicle. The supporting cast play angry spectators waiting for a play, students learning about verse and baking, and parched, starving troops on a battlefield, in pin-sharp scenes where Cyrano is not the focus. Its set by Soutra Gilmour (who also designs the costumes) in a blonde wood box, empty at first, then with a stage-wide set of steps, that suggests a toy theatre, in which the characters are the playthings of fate. Jon Clark’s lighting design is very effective, not least in its deployment of total darkness at key moments.
Pleasingly, Crimp and Lloyd bring out Christian’s vulnerability and give the deceived Roxane a proper personality: a learned woman aware of her own beauty and fiercely critical of “male gaze” objectification. There’s terrific work too from Michele Austin as pâtissier-poet Madame Ragueneau and a minty Tom Edden as the villainous De Guiche. Incredibly, Lloyd has managed to bring most of his original key cast back together two years on: of the leads, only Miller is new, but she slots in like a shiny new cog into a well-crafted machine.
There are few shows I’d rush to see twice: I’d watch this a third, fourth, fifth time in a heartbeat and find something fresh each time.
