Cyrano de Bergerac Reviews: critics agree it’s equal parts exquisite and heartbreaking

“Adrian Lester delivers a commanding performance in an impressive revival of the Edmond Rostand classic.”

“Simon Evans’s production revels in the play’s radiant comedy. It’s just as enjoyable and, in its own way, just as revelatory.”

“Lester, who wears a prosthetic nose, in keeping with the production’s flirtation with pantomime, is in his element here. His verse-speaking is a delight: he is entirely at home with the cut and thrust of Rostand’s serrated lyricism.”

“There’s much to love in the supporting detail."

“[The troupe’s] music – a mix of accordion, strings and woodwind – is beautifully in step with the eloquent use of lighting, which blooms and dims in tandem with the play’s restless shifts in mood.”

“Susannah Fielding’s Roxane is wonderful – hopelessly in love herself with the romantic possibilities of language yet also earthy and plain-talking in ways that subtly resist the objectification of the feminine such language often promotes.”

“The evening may be Lester’s – and heartbreakingly so in its final moments – but this is a magnificent revival.”

“There is much other fine comedy here, but the ticket price is worth it for the tragic final 20 minutes alone.”

“Combining astonishing physicality (he’s 57) with emotional depth, [Lester] is cocky and agile, but his agonies about his physical ugliness feel wholly sincere and build relentlessly towards a devastating denouement.”

“This production gives each of the characters their own poetic signatures. Cyrano’s is the most versatile, but Susannah Fielding’s Roxane speaks in breaking, almost modernist verse.”

“As Christian, the lover given the best lines by the tragic hero, Levi Brown has a monosyllabic Brummie-accented terseness but performs with subtle power.”

“Evans and Stevenson get to the heart of a play that is constantly asking questions about words and performance, artifice and sincerity.”

“Grace Smart’s exquisite design offers a pleasingly dreamlike, mysterious sense of place that is somehow musketeer-era France but with rifles.”

“The awareness of the power and limits of artifice is amplified by the incorporation of a band of musicians into the action, with Cyrano summoning them with a foot stamp or even winking at them on stage.”

“Sometimes a show waltzes, trippingly, from its original run into the West End for a bombastic victory lap.”

“His creative team – particularly set and costume designer Grace Smart and lighting designer Joshie Harriette – find moments of magic in the story of the martial man unable to confess his love for his childhood friend Roxane.”

“Set against the backdrop of the bloody Franco-Spanish War, it is a meditation on mortality, of life lost and love never relinquished, even after death.”

“Susannah Fielding bringing tireless wit and refreshing verve to Roxane, a woman stung by the memory of a shackling marriage and now desperately seeking liberation.”

“Levi Brown has winning charm as the provincial heartthrob Christian, from France by way of Wolverhampton, while an assortment of oddball and quirky figures flesh out the Parisian world.”

“One hilarious conceit – a group of travelling musicians forced to follow Cyrano everywhere after a high-stakes bet – adds timbre and texture to scenes, thanks chiefly to the composing work of Alex Baranowski.”

“He wears Cyrano’s flaws fearlessly on his sleeve, while another brilliant invention, the introduction of a juvenile shadow that is conjured from his youth and embodied by a voiceless young actor, works brilliantly.”

“It’s very much the romantic tragicomedy Rostand wrote, but despite its period setting, it feels wholly current.”

“It’s a clever trick of Evans’ production that, after we’ve heard the overwelming swell of Cyrano’s feelings for her, Susannah Fielding’s Roxane is in fact quite different to his description: sardonically chipper, with girl-next-door energy.”

“And Brown is winningly comic in his inability to articulate his rampant horniness.”

“Sometimes, productions lose a touch of their magic when transposed from their OG venue to a West End playhouse, but this Cyrano really fits its new mould. Capitalising on the fact its opening scene is in a theatre, musicians pop up in the boxes and characters wander through the auditorium. There’s a tiny bit of audience participation too – just to make sure we’re all mentally as well as physically present.”

“Is its final scene a tad twee and drawn out? Yes, but it’s forgiven because this Cyrano, oozing with bittersweet longing, is stirring down to its last jot.”

“Director Simon Evans and writer Debris Stevenson, who is a poet as well as a playwright, academic and “professional raver”, embrace the theatricality of the drama and also warmly embrace the audience.”

“Their lyrical, music-laced adaptation cleverly but unobtrusively gives each major character a different poetic metre to speak. It also addresses and partially redresses the misogyny of the original, a story of two men deceiving a woman.”

“Here Susannah Fielding’s Roxane is given agency and spirit: “Listen to MY story,” she says at one point.”

“It becomes a tragedy for all of the central trio, not just Cyrano: even Levi Brown’s Christian can’t be loved for the simple, honest soul he is.”

“Here at least, the slowness allows us to engage in a deeper relationship with the romantic central characters and gives space for some memorable comic sketches of the more minor ones.”

“One of the many surprises that Evans and Stevenson spring is that when this idealised woman eventually speaks she is surprisingly earthy, almost vulgar.”

“Christian, usually a himbo, is here a farm-boy looking for true love – “her hands in the soil beside mine” – who also knows the collective noun for all creatures. (This sounds pretentious but it’s utterly charming.)”

“Evans and designer Grace Smart match the verse with neat visual metaphors.”

“Edmond Rostand’s classic 1897 play sweeps into the West End in an intoxicating rush of romance and with a giddy love of language that spills off the stage.”

“Co-adapter and director Evans has fun with the witty fourth-wall breaks in his production, as the first-class cast members pop up all over the Noël Coward in the theatre-set first scene.”

“The missed opportunities and misunderstandings are funny, yet also melancholic in the face of mortality.”

“Lester’s Cyrano is magnificent, his sharp wit barely covering a long, deep anger at his treatment by society. But he’s equally good at catching the stumble in the swagger, and the disarming awkwardness of his feelings for the oblivious Roxane.”

“The play is packed with memorable turns. Brown makes for a sympathetic, gawkily naive Christian, leaning into this adaptation’s empathy for a straightforward man who just wants to be loved for who he is, not for what he can conjure with words.”

“Alex Baranowski’s lush compositions and Donato Wharton’s evocative sound design come to the fore, opening up the emotional terrain as surely as set designer Grace Smart’s acorn tree, silhouetted by Joshie Harriette’s lighting.”