NT Live (live broadcast), 20/02/2020
Rostand/Crimp : Cyrano de Bergerac
The Jamie Lloyd Company
Directed by Jamie Lloyd
Going to see this was a spur-of-the-moment decision, since I didn't find out about it before this afternoon! However, I did my homework, and so was not taken completely by surprise by the production, for this is an adaptation of the Rostand play, and not a straightforward translation. I only know Martin Crimp as the glacially eloquent purveyor of libretti for George Benjamin, but he has a bit of a track record of translation (or possibly adaptation) of French plays. In this Cyrano, it's as if it's set in two time periods simultaneously. There are constant references to its original 17th Century setting, but at the same time, just as many references to modern life. In the fourth act, while they talk of the Siege of Arras, the military references are to modern weaponry. Roxanne is a university student, reading something like literature and feminist studies, and in the last act has most definitely not retired to a convent. Ragueneau becomes Leila Ragueneau (Rostand's Mme. Ragueneau and her brief subplot disappears), and runs a café-bookshop, rather than a bakery, although she still bakes.
A lot of the secondary characters have been cut, or subsumed into other parts - Rostand uses a lot of go-betweens in his play, not just Cyrano himself, and most of these have disappeared - and there are passages which have quite simply changed, because of the modernity of the characters (Roxane in particular), notably in the last two acts. The final scene between Cyrano and Christian evolves a little differently, there's no exhortation to Cyrano to divulge the truth about the letters. The last act also, although following Rostand in outline, is fairly different in content, because Cyrano here does confess outright. Roxane's initial reaction is one of betrayal and incomprehension, and in some respects there isn't much real closure, as Cyrano's mortally wounded condition takes over.
As for the language, and the words which are such a focal point of the play, sometimes the text is a clear translation, but it drops in and out of rhyming verse very freely, and the rhymes tend to be part flyting, part slam poetry, and part rap. There's a beatboxer on-stage for the more overtly rap-like passages. There was one aspect of the translation that was an irritant to me right from the start, and that was the pronunciation of Christian's name. All the way through, it was pronounced "Christy-Anne". This was no Anglo-Saxon error of pronunciation, because there were several times it was used as part of rhyming pair, but it's fundamentally incorrect, and Crimp has surely done enough French translation to know that. Pronounced that way, you would spell it Christiane, and it's a woman's name. At any rate, it set my teeth on edge every time I heard it, and was an unwelcome distraction. Otherwise, though, this was a startlingly effective adaptation, lively, frequently very funny ("This'll work; I saw it in a Steve Martin film", Cyrano whispers to Christian during the balcony scene), and with a real relish for poetry and language, which is the be-all and end-all of Cyrano's existence.
With this kind of adaptation, small surprise that there was no kind of attempt at a period setting. The stage was severely plain, a box devoid of scenery, a few chairs now and again, and some microphones, which was a curious feature. All the cast wore facial mikes in any event, but the handheld mikes were used to create a kind of added intimacy, a focus on the discourse at that point in the proceedings, to ask deeply personal questions, or to explain or expose matter of particular intensity. Costume was thoroughly modern, mostly fairly dark colours, against which Roxane's blue-jean overalls and blue satin pussy-bow blouse gleamed as richly as an elaborately brocaded dress. There were next to no props, no books or letters, certainly no swords, and director Jamie Lloyd achieved a striking counterbalance of words and action; at times when you might expect the greatest confusion and activity on the stage, there was often the greatest stillness, notably in Act 4.
All the performances were very good, though Nima Taleghani's Lignière seemed a trifle stilted (but it was partly, at least, because his text was particularly strictly rhymed), but very much dominated by the central trio of James McAvoy, Anita-Joy Uwajeh and Eben Figueiredo as Cyrano, Roxane and Christian, who all played extremely well off each other, as well as each in their own right. Figueiredo was not quite the himbo Christian often comes off as, although the question as to whether the marriage would have lasted had he survived the war still remained. Lloyd brilliantly set the final dialogue between Roxane and Cyrano with Figueiredo sitting silently at the front of the stage, always a ghost between the cousins when they meet, a perpetually unanswered question.
Anita-Joy Uwajeh was a bright, sassy Roxane, a little petulant at times, and in the end quite moving in her realisation of how much she has been deluded, and how much she herself contributed to that delusion. As for McAvoy, his performance was little short of a tour-de-force, passionate and intense, flippant, cutting, bruised and poignant, vibrant energy contrasting with deeply focused quiet, and always, always a fierce, bitter intensity, a sense of injustice and an aching longing simmering just below the surface at all times. The moment in the balcony scene when Cyrano takes over from Christian, and when McAvoy switched over from his native Glasgow accent to Figueiredo's London-Asian one - in a production where any sort of realism was rarely applicable - was a masterclass in acting, the sudden submersion of one character into another. There was no literal nose in this Cyrano, except that there was, in this Cyrano's conviction of his own physical disgrace, so clear and so potent that it convinces all his entourage. He burned and blazed throughout the evening, and in the end guttered out, the last rhyme, the last word, unspoken on his lips.
[Next : 23rd February]
The Jamie Lloyd Company
Directed by Jamie Lloyd
Going to see this was a spur-of-the-moment decision, since I didn't find out about it before this afternoon! However, I did my homework, and so was not taken completely by surprise by the production, for this is an adaptation of the Rostand play, and not a straightforward translation. I only know Martin Crimp as the glacially eloquent purveyor of libretti for George Benjamin, but he has a bit of a track record of translation (or possibly adaptation) of French plays. In this Cyrano, it's as if it's set in two time periods simultaneously. There are constant references to its original 17th Century setting, but at the same time, just as many references to modern life. In the fourth act, while they talk of the Siege of Arras, the military references are to modern weaponry. Roxanne is a university student, reading something like literature and feminist studies, and in the last act has most definitely not retired to a convent. Ragueneau becomes Leila Ragueneau (Rostand's Mme. Ragueneau and her brief subplot disappears), and runs a café-bookshop, rather than a bakery, although she still bakes.
A lot of the secondary characters have been cut, or subsumed into other parts - Rostand uses a lot of go-betweens in his play, not just Cyrano himself, and most of these have disappeared - and there are passages which have quite simply changed, because of the modernity of the characters (Roxane in particular), notably in the last two acts. The final scene between Cyrano and Christian evolves a little differently, there's no exhortation to Cyrano to divulge the truth about the letters. The last act also, although following Rostand in outline, is fairly different in content, because Cyrano here does confess outright. Roxane's initial reaction is one of betrayal and incomprehension, and in some respects there isn't much real closure, as Cyrano's mortally wounded condition takes over.
As for the language, and the words which are such a focal point of the play, sometimes the text is a clear translation, but it drops in and out of rhyming verse very freely, and the rhymes tend to be part flyting, part slam poetry, and part rap. There's a beatboxer on-stage for the more overtly rap-like passages. There was one aspect of the translation that was an irritant to me right from the start, and that was the pronunciation of Christian's name. All the way through, it was pronounced "Christy-Anne". This was no Anglo-Saxon error of pronunciation, because there were several times it was used as part of rhyming pair, but it's fundamentally incorrect, and Crimp has surely done enough French translation to know that. Pronounced that way, you would spell it Christiane, and it's a woman's name. At any rate, it set my teeth on edge every time I heard it, and was an unwelcome distraction. Otherwise, though, this was a startlingly effective adaptation, lively, frequently very funny ("This'll work; I saw it in a Steve Martin film", Cyrano whispers to Christian during the balcony scene), and with a real relish for poetry and language, which is the be-all and end-all of Cyrano's existence.
With this kind of adaptation, small surprise that there was no kind of attempt at a period setting. The stage was severely plain, a box devoid of scenery, a few chairs now and again, and some microphones, which was a curious feature. All the cast wore facial mikes in any event, but the handheld mikes were used to create a kind of added intimacy, a focus on the discourse at that point in the proceedings, to ask deeply personal questions, or to explain or expose matter of particular intensity. Costume was thoroughly modern, mostly fairly dark colours, against which Roxane's blue-jean overalls and blue satin pussy-bow blouse gleamed as richly as an elaborately brocaded dress. There were next to no props, no books or letters, certainly no swords, and director Jamie Lloyd achieved a striking counterbalance of words and action; at times when you might expect the greatest confusion and activity on the stage, there was often the greatest stillness, notably in Act 4.
 |
| Adrian Der Gregorian (Montfleury, LH mike) and James McAvoy (Cyrano, centre mike) Cyrano de Bergerac, Act 1, Jamie Lloyd Company (© Marc Brenner, 2019) |
All the performances were very good, though Nima Taleghani's Lignière seemed a trifle stilted (but it was partly, at least, because his text was particularly strictly rhymed), but very much dominated by the central trio of James McAvoy, Anita-Joy Uwajeh and Eben Figueiredo as Cyrano, Roxane and Christian, who all played extremely well off each other, as well as each in their own right. Figueiredo was not quite the himbo Christian often comes off as, although the question as to whether the marriage would have lasted had he survived the war still remained. Lloyd brilliantly set the final dialogue between Roxane and Cyrano with Figueiredo sitting silently at the front of the stage, always a ghost between the cousins when they meet, a perpetually unanswered question.
 |
| L to R; Anita-Joy Uwajeh (Roxane), Eben Figueiredo (Christian) and James McAvoy (Cyrano) Cyrano de Bergerac, Act 5, Jamie Lloyd Company (© Marc Brenner, 2019) |
[Next : 23rd February]