BOV artistic director Tom Morris has once again triumphed, this time with a retelling of Edmond Rostand’s original verse play featuring the amply-beaked Cyrano de Bergerac. Poet Peter Oswald’s translation has brought the writing of Rostand back to life with a text that manages to engage with the late 19^th century original and with the actual life and legend of Cyrano himself, to deliver a timeless vision of a man’s battle with self-respect, and the pain of unrequited love. 

Cyrano is the renaissance man of his age – a man of science, a fine poet and a courageous and proficient swordsman. His could be the world to command but for one terrible flaw, his nose. The size of his conk undermines his self confidence in love and often drives him to fury when ridiculed by his inferiors. Because of the inner torment over his looks he makes up for his supposed shortcomings by becoming a feared duellist and warrior. Judging himself unfit to be loved because of the protuberance on his face, Cyrano feels compelled to pursue vicarious means in order to give expression to the object of his passion, Madeleine Robin, known as Roxane.

The action begins at the story’s end, in the beautifully lit garden of a monastery where Cyrano enjoys giving the nuns the latest news and gossip in the company of Roxane, who in later life has become his dearest female friend.

Designer Ti Green’s set is a subtle suggestion of gothic outline while a very beautiful and bountiful apple tree commands the space. The nuns’ delicate references to forbidden fruit in their song is not lost on us. Cyrano’s great love for Roxane remains unconsummated. The friends enter into a dreamlike state in which their pasts can be relived but merely return in tragedy. Too late Roxane has realised that her infatuation for the younger and more beautiful French-Polish officer cadet, Christian, has been built on his ability to move her heart with words of love, only to realise that these were not of his engineering. The lovelorn Cyrano is the real author she discovers, who took up the challenge to win her heart by writing on behalf of his rival. Tragically, by the time Cyrano hears that Roxane would love even an ugly man with such a gift for moving her so intensely with his prose and poetry, it is too late.

For Tristan Sturrock, an actor working with Kneehigh Theatre for 30 years, this will surely rank as one of his finest performances, a tour-de-force. Sturrock succeeds in painting this contradiction of a man throughout a pulsing two-plus hours non-stop performance on stage. Whether whispering instructions to the inept and rival lover Christian beneath Roxane’s window, leaping barricades during the war with Spain or duelling with those with the nerve to refer to his proboscis, Sturrock’s Cyrano is a playful magnet always drawing the eye, exposing the conflicted man’s inner and outer workings while he both rages and inwardly weeps.

Patrycja Kujawska plays the fair Baron Christian, a youth whose beauty has attracted Roxane’s eye. Imbuing the young cadet with ample amounts of gaucheness she effectively accentuates Cyrano’s deserving heart. Miltos Yerolemou is tremendous value as Raoul Raguneau, a baker and fellow poet, while Felix Hayes booms as the wooden Antoine Comte de Guiche, aristocrat and General in the French army. Sara Powell exudes ferocious desire as the sought-after Roxane, even following her supposed muse onto the battlefield. Guy Hughes as Cyrano’s buddy Baron Bernard Le Bret, and Giles King as Captain of the Gascon cadets push the proceedings along at good pace and provide atmospheric musical backing on piano. All appear at different times as nuns in stark white habits who seem to suggest that abstinence still represents a valid route to love.

Peter Oswald takes his opportunity in Cyrano’s final and very moving monologue to point the finger, or should I say a wounded man’s walking cane, at the foolishness of man, at a Europe crumbling at the hands of those with vested interests. His Cyrano walks across time to tell us universal truths and discomforts.  ★★★★★    Simon Bishop     19^th October 2019