Paul Flores and Julianne Holmquist (Photo by Mark Chen)
Reviewed by Joel Beers
Long Beach Shakespeare Company
Through Aug. 29
RECOMMENDED
Ren Warzecha, Sharon Speaker, Ryan Hollon, Olivia Frias, Julianne Holmquist and Shane Weikel (Photo by Mark Chen)
It may not have launched a thousand ships like Helen of Troy’s face, but the famed proboscis of Cyrano de Bergerac has launched its share of stage productions, films (the classic being the 1950 movie starring José Ferrer), musicals, operas, comic books and, perhaps most impressively, an entire genre of romantic impostors such as Steve Martin’s Roxanne.
The source is Edmond Rostand’s 1897 verse play, written in French and incorporating rhymed alexandrine couplets, a five-act romantic epic in which that gargantuan schnozz is merely the most visible of its oversized features: sword fights, verbal fireworks, deception, unrequited love, battlefield heroics and enough twists to keep a lesser production permanently off balance. Over five acts, the story moves from comedy and romantic intrigue to the battlefield and, ultimately, devastating loss. This production manages to keep all those ingredients in the mix (there’s a lot of baking in this play…) over its nearly three-hour running time
Using Brian Hooker’s 1923 translation, which renders Rostand’s rhymed couplets into English blank verse without sacrificing its lyricism or wit, director Renée Schwarz establishes a playful theatrical conceit: The play begins as a play rehearsal. A harried stage manager, Alex Lohman, frantically works through a checklist on her cellphone as the cast trickles in, each actor displaying a different symptom of “actor-itis” — elaborate breathing and vocal exercises, last-minute chatter, fidgeting and, naturally, a few who appear to have misplaced the concept of punctuality. The lone exception is Cyrano. While the rest of the company is still preparing to perform, he is already fully in character — and fully in costume. Kudos to Terry Hill for Cyrano’s swashbuckling dandy apparel, particularly the magnificent crimson feather-plumed hat.
Cyrano’s first line is delivered from the booth before he strides onto the stage, signaling that while everyone else is still rehearsing, Cyrano has already entered his world. It’s a clever bit of theatrical sleight of hand that establishes the production’s self-aware spirit while putting its central character at the heart of the illusion.
The rest of the production’s first act — the first three acts of Rostand’s play — follows the conceit. Actors adlib, mutter about not understanding a line, and occasionally play with the artificiality of the rehearsal setting. When Act II arrives, corresponding to Acts IV and V of Rostand’s script, the conceit disappears. Everyone is in full costume, the rehearsal-room business is gone and the production settles into the play itself.
The question is what, exactly, the metatheatrical framing contributes. It doesn’t fundamentally alter the story, nor does it illuminate the characters in any profound way. But it does accomplish one important thing: It makes the production feel remarkably accessible. That is no small achievement for a nearly three-hour play in which sword fights, romantic complications, elaborate wordplay and sudden reversals are all thrown into the same theatrical oven. Despite all of that, this Cyrano remains easy to follow — and thoroughly entertaining.
Whether that accessibility is a product of the metatheatrical conceit or something the production achieves despite it is harder to say.
What is considerably easier to assess is Paul Flores’s Cyrano. He’s swaggering and sensitive, forceful yet restrained, tumultuous and sardonic, prideful and deeply pained. Flores nails all that complexity with a commanding presence that never becomes stage-hogging but stays grounded in a thoroughly affable demeanor. He handles the role both physically and vocally, equally convincing as poet and fighter. And while Flores can go big when necessary, he is often most effective when he pulls back. We can hardly miss Cyrano’s preposterous proboscis (it’s not clear from the program who is most responsible for the prosthetic, but someone take a bow, please). Yet it is the eyes where this actor’s instrument is most finely tuned — conveying the wit, longing, hurt and vulnerability that Cyrano so often works to conceal. The nose may be what we see first, but the eyes are where this Cyrano truly lives.
There are some fine performances surrounding our Cyrano: Shane Weikel as the good-looking but vacuous Christian, Charlie L. Rodriguez in several supporting roles and Ryan Hollon as the manipulative and hilarious noble counter-suitor Comte de Guiche stand out. Julianne Holmquist’s Roxane has her moments, but where the other actors seem to inhabit their characters with vivid immediacy, Holmquist sometimes appears to be observing Roxane from a slight remove. The result is a performance that feels less fully inhabited, muting some of the romantic chemistry the play requires.
For all the attention paid to Cyrano’s nose, it is ultimately his heart that matters most — and this production understands why. Beneath the swordplay, verbal fireworks and theatrical trickery is a deeply vulnerable man who can summon the courage to declare his love only by giving his words to someone else to speak. Flores makes that contradiction visible, mostly through those eyes and facial reactions and it is there, more than in the production’s metatheatrical flourishes, that this Cyrano de Bergerac finds its emotional center.
Helen Borgers Theater, 4250 Atlantic Avenue, Long Beach. Fri.-Sat., 8 pm, Sun., 2 pm; thru Aug. 29. https://www.lbshakespeare.org/events. Running time: approximately three hours with an intermission
