Cyrano at Park Square Theatre

Park Square Theatre is now presenting the regional premiere of Cyrano, the Michael Hollinger translation of Edmond Rostand’s classic play. Hollinger also adapted with Aaron Posner, who directed its first production.

I’ll talk about the adaptation, but first, this production:

Joe Chvala directs a tight cast of local stars, in an exhilarating show, masterfully imagined and staged by Chvala and scenic designer Robin McIntyre. Act I launches in a blitz of repartee, intrigue, fights, chases, swordplay—and scene changes, all accomplished by a grand total of nine actors, who strike one scene, set another, and reappear as another character, in another costume, at such a consistently efficient pace that it quickly becomes part of the entertainment. I can’t imagine anybody making this adaptation work better than Chvala did.

Even before the house lights dim, actors show up on stage, obviously preparing for a performance, relaxed and smiling. It didn’t feel contrived, as broken theater conventions sometimes can. Rather it welcomed us into the world of the actors, who became the characters, whose stories soon unfolded. I felt a part of the bigger story, and it sparked a little magic.

Good, solid acting by the entire ensemble kept that spark firing enough to arch the script’s lapses.

J C Cutler as Cyrano owned every scene that was rightfully his: commanding fear and respect from the noblemen he satirizes, bringing joy to the lovers Christian and Roxane and coaxing valor from his soldier compatriots. Although resplendent in a plumed hat and handsome coat, Cutler pumped up his diminutive stature (accentuated by wide-cuffed boots) with extra bravado. No, it wasn’t just his famous nose that hampered his success in love. Cutler played it all with style.

The beautiful Roxane needed to be quite a presence for us to believe Cyrano’s sacrifice for her. Emily Gunyou Halaas is all that and more. What a charming, funny and clever heroine she gave us! In short, she has to be what Rostand had in mind.

Sam Bardwell as the dunder-headed Christian was a lovable puppy, from whom little is expected, so when Bardwell has his moment in Act II, it’s a pretty satisfying little rush.

Alan Sorenson as De Guiche, the pompous nobleman and spurned suitor to Roxane really finessed this somewhat thankless and completely necessary character. A foil for just about everybody, it might have been a toss-off part, but Sorenson mines its complexities and nuances.

Craig Johnson’s romp as Roxane’s nursemaid Desiree is a guaranteed crowd pleaser. In fact, in this and other roles, Johnson was a scene stealer, but I don’t hold him responsible. It’s the path this adaptation took, and he was just doing his job—extraordinarily well. (Did Hollinger not see this coming?)

Shawn Hamilton (Le Bret), Martin Ruben (Ragueneau), Jason Rojas (DeValvert) and Jon Andrew Hegge (Ligniere) complete the cast and all deserve solo bows.

Much discussion has never resolved whether Rostand’s play is heroic tragedy or heroic comedy. This translation picks up and runs with the comedy, but with its punchy dialogue, is it, well … too flippant? Does it pander with easy laughs at the expense of the enormous emotional wallop inherent in the fundamental story?

Looming in the wings is the inevitability of Act II.

In Hollinger’s zest for abandoning much of the rhymed verse, he blew right by an important consideration. How, then, will you deal with the unavoidable resolution of this whole story?

The method of rhymed couplets may have suited the period in which the play is set, but the presumption of this translation is that it doesn’t suit contemporary audiences. Probably true, to a degree, but you have to deal with some implausibilities somehow, don’t you? In opera, a character can be killed and sing an entire aria before falling to the floor. If the singer is good, nobody cares about the biological impossibility of that. With some poetry intact, some completely rewritten and some completely deleted, what device will serve this ending?

But first, we have to believe that seven men are holding off a large, well-equipped army that is poised to attack. If the language removed us from the reality on the stage and led us to experience it in another way, which is what poetry (or music, or dance) can do, it wouldn’t matter if it were seven, 17 or 70, would it?

Missing certain plot resolutions, and with hits and misses of poetry, punctuated by perfunctory concerns (on the order of, “I’m hungry”) we were not allowed to be lifted off the battlefield and ultimately transported to a place where we could become immersed in the larger questions of the play—and get beyond that nose.

There is a penchant these days for squeezing large shows into small casts. There’s a practical reason for doing this, of course, and making it work seems to have become part of a playwright’s or a director’s necessary skillset. On the face of it, there’s nothing wrong with it, but just what’s the tipping point? If it requires a man in drag to play a nun in the closing scene (no matter how charming this little cameo by Hegge was) is this serving the play? Are we ok with the result?

The final scene belongs to Cyrano and Roxane. Nothing else in it matters, really, and it’s not about “fixing” anything; it’s about delivering on the one thing the audience has wanted from the beginning: Roxane professing her love for Cyrano. I don’t know what, exactly, this translation messed with—or what the director felt he needed to do to accommodate the translation—but as poignant as it was, it wasn’t all encompassing, or at least bigger than me. Had it been, this audience would likely have leaped to its feet as the lights faded.

Yes, it’s fun and skillfully rendered entertainment, peppered with anachronisms and acting panache. You’re gonna love the first act. Chvala, cast and crew deliver, and I do recommend that you go. There aren’t that many directors out there that can do what Chvala can. It runs through April 6.