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.
