Theatre in Review: Cyrano de Bergerac (Roundabout Theatre Company/American Airlines Theatre)

	Samuel Roukin, Douglas Hodge. Photo: Joan Marcus

As this season proves, we are living in the age of the perpetual revival. At times, it feels as if Broadway is stuck in a time loop, forced to present the same titles over and over. We're getting Glengarry Glen Ross seven years after its last revival. We're getting the third Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in a decade. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is back after a pause of only seven years. (I know it's the 50th anniversary revival, but still.) And if it is time to do The Heiress again, it is only barely so.

Cyrano de Bergerac is another example, having been last seen in a popular revival, starring Kevin Kline, in 2007. If you're wondering what could possibly justify the rush to revive it, look no further than Douglas Hodge, the production's star, who, for better or worse, is giving us a distinctively different Cyrano. Typically, he is portrayed as a tall, dandyish figure, delighting in his florid manners and rapier wit. Usually played by matinee-idol types, he usually sports a somewhat too-large nose that is the only blemish on an otherwise handsome face. Hodge's Cyrano is more like an unleashed terrier, a scrappy bantamweight troublemaker who looks like he slept all night in his doublet. (You have to wonder where most Cyranos get their wardrobes; as the script makes clear, he is usually out of money, and, by the final act, he has penned so many satires of those in power that no one is willing to help him out. In his final appearance, Hodge's Cyrano looks as if he is one step away from becoming a member of Paris' homeless community.)

In addition, Hodge sports an enormous, bulbous appurtenance that is impossible to ignore, even for a second. His face resembles a bust on which the sculptor gave up, leaving an unshaped lump of clay at the center of the face. The common interpretation of the character is that he has transmuted his private sorrows, especially his distress over his appearance, into a mocking sense of humor that gets him into endless trouble. By contrast, Hodge's Cyrano is powered by an almost infantile rage -- if he dislikes someone, his attitude is off with his head, now -- with pauses for moments of sadder, more probing reflection. (The famous balcony scene, in which Cyrano, hidden from view, impersonates the good-natured, but doltish, Christian in order to woo Roxane, is here stripped of its usual moon-drunk lyricism; instead, it is inflected with anxiety and a terrible, pressing longing that can never be fulfilled.)

Because this is not a Cyrano who charms, but who demands your attention in the manner of an angry tyrant, it can take quite a while to care about his fate. Hodge's performance is a thing of physics -- intensity combined with velocity -- and at times it wipes everyone else off the stage. For much of the first act, the show resembles an old-fashioned actor-manager touring production, with the star at stage center declaiming with vigor, while everyone else stays out of his way. When he first enters (through one of the theatre's side doors, which opens onto 43rd Street), launching an attack on the actor Montfleury by howling, "You ham," my first thought was, He should talk. But this approach does pay dividends in the second half, when tragedy comes Cyrano's way and Hodge gives us a man beaten down by events, struggling to live up to his own reputation and exhausting himself in the process, as his superhuman energy winds down, leaving him a burnt-out case.

The rest of Jamie Lloyd's production is a collection of pluses and minuses. One reason that the 1985 Royal Shakespeare Company revival remains my gold standard for Cyranos is that it is the only time, in my experience, when Roxane was played by an equally powerful personality. (The stars were Derek Jacobi and Sinéad Cusack, which, to my mind, is still the pair to beat.) Clémence Poésy (Fleur Delacour to all you Harry Potter fans) has plenty going for her, including lovely looks; an intelligent, well-spoken manner; and an impish sense of defiance that makes it seem thoroughly plausible that she would dress as a man and slip onto the battlefield, bearing cargoes of bread for starving soldiers. My only reservation about her work is that it often seems conceived for the motion picture camera rather than the stage. (Her bio indicates that she has worked extensively in film and television, less so on stage.) This is a significant debit when stacked up against Hodge's approach, which is aimed just beyond the last row of the balcony. As the Comte de Guiche, Cyrano's humorless, aristocratic rival, Patrick Page -- decked out in flowing locks, his face frozen in a sneer that barely recognizes the mere mortals around him -- is a model of suave villainy transmuted to bravery on the battlefield. He has an especially powerful moment when, informing Cyrano's men that they are positioned to become cannon fodder, he roars at them, "If you'd been less bumptious...."then cuts himself off, holding a hand over his mouth to prevent the completion of the ugly thought.

In any Cyrano, the actor cast as Christian has little to do besides look gorgeous and appear to be inarticulate; here, the extremely handsome Kyle Soller has been double-crossed by Soutra Gilmour, the costume designer, and Amanda Miller, the hair and wig designer. Outfitted with a long, wavy hairpiece that reminded me of Weird Al Yankonvic, he fails to cut the necessary dashing figure. There are solid contributions, however, from Max Baker as Le Bret, Cyrano's loyal friend, and Bill Buell as Ragueneau, the urbane, poetry-loving baker.

In its best moments, Lloyd's staging embraces Cyrano for the melodrama it is, full of swordfights, dashing entrances, rousing battles, and outsized emotions. When Montfleury appears on stage, an enormous stage curtain drops in behind him; as Cyrano disrupts his performance, the curtain falls on the actor and he is removed from the stage with dispatch by jeering spectators. There is a stunning transition from the heat of the battlefield to the cool of the cloister to which Roxane removes herself after her lover's death. Gilmour's setting, a series of walls filled with arches, combined with Japhy Weidman's stunning side lighting, creates the effect of a Rembrandt canvas come to life. (The show's look, including the costumes, seems especially influenced by the artist's Night Watch.) Dan Moses Schreier adds key sound effects -- jeering crowds, birdsong, the roar of cannonade - that create a sense of the larger world swirling around the characters. There has been a fair amount of comment about Ranjit Bolt's translation, which makes abundant use of anachronisms and contemporary formulations ("humongous," "penthouse suite," "sorry, my pal," "I don't do fear") but in a play so fanciful and so dedicated to the playful properties of language, these are surely the most venial of sins. Overall, the text is vivid, muscular, and highly speakable.

But this production will stand or fall for you based on your reaction to Hodge's outrageous, excessive, sometimes wrongheaded, sometimes incisive performance. At one point, the text refers to Cyrano as a "heroic, superb maniac." I couldn't have said it better myself.--David Barbour