Reviews 2009
Reviews 2009
✭✭✩✩✩
written by Edmond Rostand, directed by Donna Feore
Stratford Festival, Festival Theatre, Stratford
June 19-November 1, 2009
"Out by a Nose (or Two)"
“Cyrano de Bergerac” is one of those spectacles a theatre company should do well or not at all. The current Stratford production directed by Donna Feore and starring her husband Colm Feore is a shadow of the previous Stratford production in 1994 directed by Derek Goldby that also starred Colm Feore. The 1994 production itself was a shadow of Derek Goldby’s previous production of the play for the Shaw Festival in 1982 and 1983 starring Heath Lamberts, which still ranks as the best “Cyrano” Ontario has ever seen. The present “Cyrano” is marred by inept direction, dreary design and crucial miscasting of one of the main roles.
Despite its huge cast of 36, “Cyrano” sinks or swims on the basis of only three performances--those of the titular macrorhinous poet and swordsman; Roxane, the noblewoman he loves and who is attracted to Christian; and Christian, the handsome but aesthetically-challenged soldier whom Cyrano, thinking his own ugliness rules him out as a suitor, helps to woo Roxane. If we can’t be interested in the fates of these three, we won’t be interested in the play. Sadly, this is the case. Amanda Lisman, making her Stratford debut, is fatally miscast as Roxane. She may be pretty in a 21st-century way, but she has an extraordinarily narrow emotional and vocal range. She inflects all her lines exactly the same way no matter what their content and maintains an emotion only as long as the line lasts that expresses it. She also seems not to understand fully what all of her lines mean, making it impossible to believe her as a literary woman who thinks words are more important than deeds.
In contrast, Mike Shara as Christian gives the best performance of the evening. This is not Christian the male airhead of the 1994 production, but rather a man like Shakespeare’s Claudio of “Much Ado” who has devoted his life to action and understands words as commands not embellishments. Shara’s subtler approach helps make Roxane look less foolish in loving Christian and Cyrano less foolish in helping him. Here Christian’s realization that Cyrano’s own love is why Cyrano has written Roxane twice a day becomes the most moving moment in the play.
Most people would think the most emotional part of the play would be Cyrano’s death at the end, but Colm Feore’s performance prevents us becoming engaged in the character. First of all, Feore, fifteen years after his energetic Cyrano of 1994, seems like a ghost of his former self. His vocal range is narrower and he seems to exhaust his available breath at the end of every line. This is suitable for the play’s ending but not for the swaggering adventurer of the first four acts. Second, Feore’s favourite habits of cadence that he suppressed for Des McAnuff in this year’s “Macbeth”, Donna Feore allows to have full rein. The result is that he speaks all his lines in the same general rhythm with the same rises and falls no matter what the content. His Cyrano, in fact, sounds very much the same as his Fagin in “Oliver!” in 2006, also directed by his wife. Over time this lack of variety becomes monotonous. The final scene which should tug at our heart here seems tediously extended primarily because Feore’s self-indulgence quashes our emotion.
Adding to these woes are Donna Feore’s poor directorial choices. At the very start of the play, she has a Boy (Thomas Feore) in modern clothes enter and become dressed in 17th-century garb by actors who look rather like circus performers. This common-man-gets-drawn-into-world-of play theme was actually part of Cirque du Soleil’s “Nouvelle Expérience” in 1990. The problem is that she does nothing with this theme after introducing it and seems to forget about the boy entirely. Next the Festival stage is dominated by Santo Loquasto’s movable tower-like set that includes a two-storey staircase and arches suggesting a doorway. This is situated in the now-open space where the Festival’s balcony used to be and is turned about often for no particular reason. When Cyrano and Christian want to attract Roxane’s attention, they throw stones against her lit window in the side wall, but since the tower is not connected to the window, Roxane in answer climbs up the steps in front of the window to a free-standing balcony. In Ragueneau’s bakery, Feore places the prime display of goods behind the set piece so that hardly anyone can see them. During the siege of Arras, she leaves the tower on stage so that when Roxane brings on her cart of provisions it can barely squeeze into the space to the stage right side of the tower. Thus the surprise of the arrival of the cart is ruined as is the revelation of what is in it.
Especially annoying is Feore’s use of music to underscore nearly the entire play. For sword fights and battles she has had Leslie Arden compose bombastic John Williamsesque action movie music. For all beautiful or significant speeches, she employs chamber music with far too much use of glissandi on a chime tree to enforce an “Isn’t this magical!” feeling. In her notes, Dona Feore says, “This production is unique, as far as I know, in that we’ve kept several passages in French, thus allowing our audiences to hear Rostand in his original voice.” If Feore were really so concerned about Rostand’s words, why can’t she let them speak for themselves without all the musical underscoring? While retaining passages in the original does give the play more of a French flavour, those without French may find it annoying and those with French will search in vain for reasons why certain passages are or are not in French. The most glaring example is found in the set itself over which looms the words: “Mes regards dont c'était dont c'était les frémissantes fêtes, Ne baiseront au vol les gestes que vous faites; J'en revois un petit qui vous est familier ....” Throughout the play we wonder when these words, unremarkable in themselves, will have any relevance. We exit unenlightened. That is because these words mark the point when Roxane hears the aged Cyrano reading the last letter that Christian supposedly wrote her and realizes that Cyrano is the true author. The key moment is spoken in English in the play so that only if you have memorized the play in French will you know what the words emblazoned over the stage refer to. And even if you do, so what? There are far more significant passages to choose from that would encompass the whole of the action instead of a single moment.
“Cyrano” may really be the story of three people imbedded in a mass of spectacle but a good production will allow the 33 other actors involved to create a rich gallery of portraits against which Cyrano, Christian and Roxane act out their drama. Ms. Feore seems content merely to move all these actors about instead of encouraging them to bring their characters to life. In larger roles, Wayne Best as Cyrano’s confidant Le Bret is simply “the loyal friend” and no more. Steve Ross as Ragueneau the baker-poet is simple the “jolly fat man”. John Vickery is suitably pompous as Roxane’s villainous guardian the Comte de Guiche, but oddly turns up the pomposity when de Guiche is meant to be reconciled and sincere at the end.
In the huge number of minor roles only two actor distinguish their characters from the general blur. Douglas E. Hughes is delightfully quirky as the the old roué Lignière, who brings Christian to the theatre. Robert Persichini is very funny as the horribly old-fashioned actor Montfleury, whom Cyrano drives off the stage. Otherwise, it’s impossible to know who is who or to care.
The sense of background blur is not helped by the design. Loquasto has dressed everyone, noble or poor, except for the blue-clad cadets, in earth tones making it even more difficult to pick out individuals. Black does not appear until Act 5, but there his design contradicts the text. We are told emphatically that for fifteen years Cyrano has lived in squalor and has only one moth-eaten cloak to his name. Yet, when he visits Roxane for the last time his entire outfit looks brand new. Cyrano’s suffering is meant to enhance the pathos of the situation, but like so many other details in this production, goes unheeded. Lighting designer Alan Brodie makes very little of the numerous possibilities for contrast between interior and exterior light, times of day or times of year. An important change of light occurs only at the end when Roxane notices how dark it has become while Cyrano is “reading” Christian’s final letter.
All of these flaws combine to make “Cyrano” not the exciting, moving showpiece it should be, but instead a noisy, emotionally empty spectacle that is not even superficially attractive. Those who love the play will be sadly disappointed.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photo: Amanda Lisman and Colm Feore. ©David Hou.
2009-07-17
Cyrano de Bergerac