Cyrano de Bergerac
Richard Rodgers Theatre, New York
(212) 307-4100
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Cyrano de Bergerac keeps getting revived for one reason only, said Clive Barnes in the New York Post. The title role is one of the best ever written. “A great play it isn’t,” but Edmond Rostand did give his long-nosed hero plenty of swordfights and romance, to say nothing of extended flights of poetry. “Some actors were born to play Cyrano,” and Kevin Kline is one. If you come to Broadway to see some of the same mad brio Kline has brought to countless roles onstage and in film, “you will certainly get your money’s worth.” But Kline also lends Rostand’s insecure braggart a certain self-knowledge and melancholy. In fact, this Cyrano is rather too melancholy. “David Leveaux’s staging this time around misses Rostand’s fun and ebullient high spirits and lets the play move like a reluctant snail, with Kline desperately trying to jolly everyone along.” Despite the title, a successful Cyrano needs to be more than a oneman show, said Joe Dziemianowicz in the New York Daily News. Equally essential are the roles of Roxane, the beautiful cousin for whom Cyrano secretly pines, and Christian, a hunky but emptyheaded fellow admirer, who asks for Cyrano’s help in wooing Roxane. Theirs is a classic love triangle, “but Cyrano can’t do all the heavy lifting and generate heat by himself,” as Kline is asked to do here. Daniel Sunjata’s Christian rivals a “leafless tree for stark woodenness,” while Jennifer Garner of TV’s Alias proves pretty, but not much more, as Roxane. This is above all “a play about the power of words,” but Garner doesn’t seem to understand what Roxane’s lines actually mean. She “goes from little-girl breathy to Kathleen Turner husky, and either way she breathes no conviction into her role.” That’s not the performance I saw, said Peter Marks in The Washington Post. “Garner conveys intelligence and naturalness on the stage, qualities to be prized in an actress accustomed to the intimacy of the lens.” Her previous roles also wouldn’t suggest the aptitude for comedy she displays here. “Poised, vivacious, and plucky,” she leaves no doubt why the two men admire her. Garner’s inexperience as a stage actress only reveals itself in the play’s final scenes, when she’s called upon to play an older, wiser Roxane, nostalgically looking back with cousin Cyrano. “Kline comes to the rescue, injecting wisdom for both of them.” The master thespian and the theatrical newcomer make an odd but undeniably affecting pair.
