The pristine sound design by Ben and Max Ringham is also key to this. But McAvoy is so specific in his intention and he’s so comfortable with the text that even as it rushes by, there’s specificity and clarity in his every word.
The language moves quickly–at first, it feels like you’re not catching it all. Crimp’s adaptation asks a lot of every actor, and of the audience. McAvoy has an impressive command of the language.
This Cyrano’s outward attractiveness is a physical manifestation of his intellect it takes Cyrano’s inner beauty and shows us what it looks like on the outside. We buy it, without reservation, because the world around him has so firmly established that he’s ugly. There’s no prosthetic nose and McAvoy, muscular in a tight t-shirt, puts the throb in heartthrob. In Lloyd’s production, Cyrano’s not repulsive at all. He’s also plagued with an enormous nose that makes him visually repulsive. He delivers spontaneous bouts of poetry and can fell an enemy with only verbal dexterity. Or, more accurately, it lives and thrives on that performance, since McAvoy is titanic in the part, delivering rapid-fire dialogue and dynamic physicality in an unforgettable piece of acting.Ĭyrano is a master of words. As a result, it lives and dies on the central performance by James McAvoy. Working off a new adaptation by Martin Crimp that blends rap, slam poetry, and ASMR, the production puts Cyrano’s words front and center. Words are currency, and weapons, and instruments of transformation in Jamie Lloyd’s sleek, modern dress revival of Cyrano de Bergerac at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. “Cyrano de Bergerac” at the BAM Harvey Theatre (Photo: Marc Brenner) “Lloyd and Crimp have conjured up something pretty remarkable, the cut and thrust world of seventeenth-century France reinvented as a series of rap battle royals, or grand poetry slams.” Read the review here. He woos Roxane (an eagerly intelligent Anita-Joy Uwajeh) through the ardent romantic speeches that he ghost-writes for the man she thinks she fancies.” Read the review here. “McAvoy is very good at conveying the awful vertigo of Cyrano’s reluctant but self-merciless masochism.
“Yes there are times when Lloyd’s production feels like it’s striving too hard to generate a hip, post-Hamilton vibe, but it tempers this with a sense of humour.and a genuine sense of poignancy, while also featuring a majestic central performance from the charismatic McAvoy.” Read the review here. But Lloyd’s production makes you see an old play with fresh eyes.” Read the review here. Given that Rostand set out out in 1897 to provide an antidote to naturalistic drama this may seem perverse. “At its best, this re-reading of Rostand works beautifully.This is a Cyrano that dispenses with conventional spectacle, colourful costumes and visual flummery.
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