"Cyrano" @ Ashland
*Top Banana*/Play Review: / “Cyrano de Bergerac,” /by Edmond Rostand, at the
Elizabethan Theater, Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF), Ashland/.
In the course of this swash-buckling tragicomedy, you’re guaranteed to
learn at least one word of French: /panache/. We once had it in American
English, too, as a loan-word, but now we’ve lost it, ceded it back to
its country of origin in favor of its dumbed-down TexMex cognate,
/machismo/.
Yet / panache/ still appears in Webster’s with two definitions: its
literal meaning as an ornamental feather-in-the-cap, and its figurative
sense – “dashing elegance of manner…spirited self-confidence, or style.”
Rostand’s title character, a down-at-the-heels poet/grenadier in Louis
XIII Paris, displays lavish /panache/ in both senses of the word. The
white, “triple-waving plume” in his hat is the only extravagance in his
otherwise threadbare garb. As for flamboyant personal élan, count on
Cyrano to single-handedly fend off 100 hired assassins or to extemporize
a ballade in classic rhyme while simultaneously skewering a dueling
opponent.
It’s not hard to get into a duel with Cyrano; you have but to mention
his nose. Like everything else about him, it’s heroic – grotesquely
outsized, “a promontory, a peninsula.” His hyper-sensitivity about it
keeps him from confessing his long-cherished secret love for his
blue-stocking cousin, Roxanne.
His hopes rise when she requests a discreet assignation. He thrills to
her admission that she, too, has been nursing an unspoken passion. But
then she goes on to name the object of her crush: a handsome young baron
newly arrived in Paris to join Cyrano’s own military company, the Gascon
Guards.
She fears that her little baron will be mercilessly hazed as a
Northerner by his Southern fellow-cadets. The only thing these Gascon
swaggerers can be counted on to respect is Cyrano himself, that paragon
of Southern gallantry.
Would he, as Roxanne’s devoted cousin, kindly undertake to befriend
young Baron Christian? And, while he’s at it, please prod the dear boy
to send her some flowery /billets doux/?
Hiding his chagrin, Cyrano tackles the assignment with zeal, going so
far as to ghost-write love letters for the tongue-tied baron and
prompting him from the sidelines as he whispers sweet nothings under
Roxanne’s balcony. When this type of ventriloquism gets too cumbersome,
Cyrano even dares to directly declaim his own rhapsodies from the garden
shadows – but it’s still Christian who climbs up the vines to collect
the proffered kiss.
And when the Gascon Guards get flung into the thick of combat at the
siege of Arras, Cyrano not only maintains Christian’s correspondence
with Roxanne, but steals twice a day through Spanish lines to post the
letters. So irresistible is his eloquence that Roxanne braves the war
zone to rejoin her love on the frontline (in the process breaking the
siege, / á la française/, to bring the Guards a coach full of pastries
and wines).
At this point, Christian can stand the deception no longer; he insists
that Cyrano reveal the truth. But just as that’s about to happen, a
Spanish bullet catches the little baron, who dies in Roxanne’s arms with
his secret intact.
It’s still intact 20 years later as Roxanne continues to mourn her lost
love in the seclusion of a convent where she’s retired ever since Arras.
Her only regular visitor is Cyrano, who regales her with a weekly update
on court gossip.
This week he’s late for the first time ever. When, at sunset, he finally
arrives, he asks to see Christian’s farewell letter, which she’s
cherished ever since the fateful seige. As he intones the elegiac lines,
she realizes that he couldn’t possibly be reading from the page in the
fading light; he must be reciting from memory. The truth of authorship
finally dawns on her: “those tear-stains – they’re yours!”
“Ah, but the blood-stains are his,” Cyrano grandly replies, and gets on
with his recap of the week’s gossip. The final item in the day-by-day
gazette relates how Cyrano himself has been done in by one of the many
enemies he’s made with his mordant pen. Since nobody could beat him at
swordplay, they had to brain him with a falling hearth log in a cowardly
ambush.
Whereupon Cyrano breaks off his account and unbridles his steel to parry
the phantasms he feels closing in around him. In a grand delirium, he
slashes away at such allegoric foes as Falsehood, Flattery and Bigotry.
Wrest all from me, Cyrano taunts his enemies, but there’s still one
thing that remains inviolate as I sweep across the threshold of
eternity. And that is (pause here for a flourish of his plumed
/chapeau/) my /panache/!
At this point, I don’t think there was a dry eye in the house the night
we were there – especially since that performance turned out to be the
end, for a while, of Ashland veteran Marco Barricelli’s run as Cyrano.
He had to leave, suddenly in mid-season, due to his mother’s illness. He
may be back later this year, but the OSF is unsure just when.
The show will go on, of course. Director Laird Williamson has paced the
production with enough momentum to keep it rolling even without its
star. Then, too, there are plenty of other worthy supporting actors,
starting with Rex Young as Christian and the ever-versatile Robin
Goodrin Nordli as Roxanne.
Derek Lee Weedon is at his snarky best as de Guiche, the well-connected
nobleman who tries to snake Cyrano and annexe Roxanne. Heart-warming
performances, too, from Cyrano’s faithful groupies, the grenadier LeBret
(David Kelly) and the poet/pastrycook Ragueneau (Robert Vincent Frank).
But the linchpin of any Cyrano production must always be the title role,
and for Barricelli – as for any actor in his prime – it’s a career
highlight. He doubtless had a lot on his mind that night, yet for
three-and-a-half hours he maintained just the right mix of athleticism
and lyricism.
And then, at the curtain call, he peeled off his putty nose and tossed
it into the wildly cheering crowd. How’s that for /panache/?
Labels: Reviews
