Review: Cyrano de Bergerac – Hill Street Theatre

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Cyrano de Bergerac has been fascinating audiences for around 400 years, first as a flesh & blood writer cum duelist, before being translated into Edmond Rostand’s tragicomic play in 1897. Extant playwright Glyn Maxwell has adapted that exclusively verse-conceived text and this week, in 2024, Edinburgh thesps, Arkle Theatre are performing an exceedingly good rendition of it.

Key to this success is the casting of John Lally in the titular role. He offers just the right mix of gallantry and barstool wit to make the long-nosed swordsman-poet a hero worthy of attention. He is more than ably supported by a cast which gives every appearance of enjoying themselves from start to finish. This is critical to a play that relies so heavily on the chemistry between its characters.

For those new to Cyrano, it’s a simple tale. Idiot boy, Christian (Steven Bradley Croall) meets Roxanne (Hannah Bradley Croall), ward of the powerful Count de Guiche (Gregor McElvogue). Idiot boy is drafted into the Gascon Cadets, led by Cyrano himself. Poet Cyrano, also in love with Roxanne, his childhood bestie, tries to make her dreams come true by ghost-writing Christian’s love letters and supplying the poetry he so badly lacks. The Franco-Spanish war descends upon this love triangle and turns comedy to heroic tragedy.

There’s more than a little Blackadder to proceedings which marry a ribald sense of humour to mortally serious narrative undertones. Cyrano is the prime mover in most affairs, be it sword fights, battles of wit, the foiling of lusty aristocrats, or heroic last stands before impossible odds. Not everyone is an idiot in comparison, but there are certainly a few candidates for the Baldric role amongst the expansive character list.

Where Rostand’s original line-up is overwhelmingly male, however, Maxwell invites a stronger female presence. The play opens with an older Roxanne residing within a convent, attended by nuns keen for the stories of an ageing Cyrano who visits daily.

As the nuns, and indeed a host of other characters as required, Kate Stephenson, Sinead Gray, Hannah Fitzpatrick and Laura Sochar visibly bubble with scene-chewing enthusiasm. It’s an energy which thankfully lubricates some of the play’s clunkier humour.

Kudos are also due to Alastair Lawless and Gordon Craig, who turn in humorously sympathetic turns as baker Ragueneau and Cyrano’s comrade Le Bret, respectively.

L- Hannah Bradley Croall & John Lally; Top-Right – John Lally & Gregor McElvogue; Bottom-Right – The cast of Cyrano de Bergerac – All © Rob Shields

Director Phil Barnes shows an excellent touch in every scene, finding plenty of pace so that the ~2-hour run-time passes surprisingly quickly. There’s plenty of space for a charismatic Lally to impress nevertheless, and so too Hannah Bradley Croal, whose grounded, passionate performance is key to the production’s big heart.

Within the compact Hill Street Theatre, the production’s simple, but more than functional staging works well. There’s even a little cleverly deployed music from Dug Campbell, which particularly enhances the play’s late second-act contemplation of mortality.

The play itself isn’t quite perfect, the writing for Christian making him seem more than a touch predatory, and far from gracious when realising his lover’s admiration has been stolen from another. It makes Cyrano’s provision of this rival’s love-letters less charming, and more an act of self-harm. It’s a dynamic which Steve Martin dealt with far better in his superb 1987 movie, Roxanne.

There’s another potential difficulty in the ‘redemption’ of the married Duke who spends most of the first act trying to bed Roxanne and doing his best to get her lover killed. However, a superbly plummy McElvogue transcends that problem, creating a cheerfully flawed aristocrat who ultimately finds a spine before growing up.

What sets this production of Cyrano de Bergerac further apart may, surprisingly, be its final scenes wherein the comedy fades, and pathos ascends. War, death, and unfulfilled promises are played with utter sincerity: dramatic, but not melodramatic. It takes courage to lean earnestly into such a change of tone, and it pays off.

In the final reckoning, this is a strong performance of a play capable of challenging larger companies with bigger budgets. Good casting, invested performances, and solid direction make Arkle Theatre’s Cyrano de Bergerac a swashbuckling piece of community theatre a cut above.

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For tickets and more information on Cyrano de Bergerac, click here.

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