![]() ![]() The setting is 1640s France by way of an empty wooden box the costumes are straight out of Fort Greene circa 2022 (Soutra Gilmour, Lloyd's longtime design collaborator, did both, further enhancing the ultra-minimalist aesthetic they displayed on Broadway in Betrayal). ![]() Using a new translation by Martin Crimp that faithfully transforms Rostand's romantic verses into slam poetry (complete with beatboxer), this erotically charged Cyrano de Bergerac is a titillating thrill from start to finish, and my favorite of all the Cyrano's I've seen, by much more than just a nose. James McAvoy is the latest performer to go without the false proboscis, and with good reason: Why distract the audience from the hottest Cyrano they'll ever see? It's one of many deconstructions in Jamie Lloyd's electrifying new take of the classic, now running a victory lap at Brooklyn Academy of Music after two hit engagements in London's West End. His élan is always more important than his schnoz - and I've always been sidetracked by the mechanics of the prosthetics, anyway. ![]() What matters most (for this play, anyway) is the actor's ability to rip the hearts out of our chests and show them to us through his sheer command of language. As Peter Dinklage showed us just a few years ago (and more recently on screen), one needs not don the long, protuberant, fake nose to convincingly portray Edmund Rostand's beloved tragic hero Cyrano de Bergerac. ![]()
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