Review by Kate Gaul
Virginia Gay’s adaptation of “Cyrano” was written in lockdown and enjoyed a limited Australian run. As it never made it to Sydney it was a pleasure to catch this Scottish production with Gay in the central role. In Edinburgh, the show has kicked it out of the ballpark and become a local darling scooping prizes and praise along the way.
On an almost empty stage begin three unnamed actors, played by the hilarious, touching and very skilled trio of David Tarkenter, Tessa Wong and Tanvi Virmani, toss around different approaches to putting on the play. Clare Watson’s production has begun before we have even sat down. It’s all very meta theatrical. Then the lines between the play and the play within the play merge and Cyrano, played by writer Virginia Gay, enters. In this feel-good version, Gay is able to deconstruct and reconstruct the tropes of the well-worn story of the overlooked. The audience is addressed directly and always clued into the reconstruction. Ultimately the chorus add very little to the story which is essentially the love triangle between Cyrano, Roxanne and Yan where Rozanne is catfished, presented with the illusion of single man perfect in body and mind.
Cyrano is looking for her happy ending in Gay’s deconstructed, gender-swapped subversion of Cyrano de Bergerac, Edmond Rostand’s 1897 play, seeking to fulfil her unrequited love of the beautiful Roxane (Jessica Whitehurst), using her language to woo Roxane by proxy through the physically desirable but inarticulate Yan (Brandon Grace). The idea is that -although no one actually states it - this Cyrano is overlooked in love not just because of the famously long nose but also their sexuality. For Roxanne Cyrano is a confidante, while Yan takes Cyrano as a man. Cyrano is doubly excluded, and also doubly sensitive to Roxanne’s needs as a woman and doubly aware of the (in)effectiveness of Yan’s macho chat-up lines.
Virginia Gay shines onstage – all swagger and confidence, the best at everything (as Cyrano tells us) and all of this conceals a belief that Cyrano has that no one could love them. But how wrong they are. The fun of the show is seeing how it all pans out. This is a play about words, their seductive and destructive power – but with a very light touch in this adaptation. Gay has skill and wit by the bucket full and although the play text is rendered in a textually lighter contemporary vein we get the point.
The production is conversational, chatty and therefore extremely accessible. I was looking for more drama, but I appreciated the rom-com interpretation. Songs replace sword fighting of the original, there are not super long speeches in the verse of the original, the tragic ending is cauterised for a saccharine girl-gets-girl triumph. It’s super cheesy. It’s presented as a production born out of a dress up box where ideas and interpretations flow freely with less mind to cohesion. If you want something closer to the original, then this 90-minute slimmed down version of a production is not for you. But let’s face it, you can’t fault a company for wanting to (and succeeding) in creating joy. The full houses at the Traverse as part of Edinburgh Fringe agree.
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