Reduced Edmond Rostand is all the rage these days. Last year Northampton’s Royal and Derngate theatre and Northern Stage joined forces to set the classic Anthony Burgess version of this heroic comedy in a cluttered school-gym. Now Glyn Maxwell’s adaptation, originally written for Chester’s open-air theatre, has been slimmed down further as a vehicle for eight female actors. As one of them is Kathryn Hunter, that gives the evening a certain swagger, but it’s not quite the Rostand we know and love.
The play was written in 1897 as a riposte to Ibsen and Zola at a time when the theatre was dominated, as Rostand said, by “realism, naturalism, scepticism”. Although famed for his big conk, the key point about the hero is that he embodies the idea of romantic self-sacrifice in that his love for Roxane is filtered through the verses he writes for the inarticulate Christian. The play is also a hymn to the idea of artistic freedom: “Better that,” as Cyrano says in Maxwell’s version, “than praise a popinjay because he’s got a column.” But this adaptation dilutes Cyrano’s literary self-consciousness. Asked in the Burgess version if he’s read Don Quixote, he memorably replies “Read it? I’ve practically lived it.”
Relying heavily on four wooden boxes to suggest the play’s shifting locales, Russell Bolam’s production makes a virtue of simplicity but its chief fascination is Hunter’s Cyrano. Since she’s played Lear and Richard III, we know Hunter can transcend gender and, with chest thrust out and hands defiantly placed on hips, she has no difficulty in conveying Cyrano’s strutting masculinity. She also sports a decidedly phallic, strapped-on nose. Hunter is at her best, however, in the play’s smaller moments. She winces with pain as Roxane describes Christian as “handsome” and displays a dry wit when, asked to keep the lad out of fights, she exasperatedly replies: “Roxane, he’s joining the army.”
It’s a performance that confirms what we already knew: that Hunter is an astonishing shape-shifting performer who can play just about anything. But, although the use of an all-female cast strikes a glancing blow for feminism, it doesn’t do much to help the play. Sabrina Bartlett lends Roxane a nice brattish petulance and Tamzin Griffin has the right lordly arrogance as De Guiche. But Ellie Kendrick can’t do much to redeem the wimpish Christian and, although the other actors swap hats and costumes with great energy, the prevailing note is one of contrived playfulness.
The simple truth is that Rostand’s romantic play demands flourish and spectacle which, in these austere times, seem in sadly short supply.
- At Southwark Playhouse, London, until 19 March. Box office: 020-7407 0234.
