CYRANO
 |
| Christopher Plummer and company |
In Lieu of Reviews"
Reviews of live theatre being impossible during these days of the pandemic, THEATRE'S LEITER SIDE
is pleased to provide instead accounts of previous theatre
seasons--encompassing the years 1970-1975-for theatre-hungry readers. If you'd
like to know the background on how this previously unpublished series came to
be and what its relationship is to my three The Encyclopedia of the New
York Stage volumes (covering every New York play, musical, revue, and
revival between 1920 and 1950), please check the prefaces to any of the entries
beginning with the letter “A.” See the list at the end of the current entry.
 |
| Leigh Berry, Mark Lamos. |
CYRANO [Musica/Friendship/Military/Period/Romance/War]
B/LY: Anthony Burgess; M: Michael J. Lewis; SC: Edomond Rostan’s play, Cyrano de Bergerac; D: Michael Kidd; S:
John Jensen; C: Desmond Heeley; L: Gilbert Hemsley, Jr.; P: Richard Gregson and
APJAC International; T: Palace Theatre; 5/13/73-6/2/73 (49)
Anthony
Burgess’s successful adaptation of Rostand’s 1897 romantic classic about the
long-nosed, poetic, master-fencer, staged by Michael Langham at Minneapolis’s
Guthrie Theatre, was turned into this elaborate Broadway musical. Despite some
highly favorable notices, it went quickly to its rest.
The
major argument put forward against it was that musicalizing the play added
nothing to it that was not already contained in the melody of Rostand’s verse,
the color of his emotions, the panache of his characters, and the spectacle of
his backgrounds. Burgess’s perhaps too literary lyrics and dialogue were not
the problem, although John Simon and Walter Kerr did do battle with some of
their perceived infelicities. Nor did the main issue lie in the staging, the décor,
the ensemble, the dueling scenes, or the tour-de-force dynamism of star
Christopher Plummer in the leading role.
 |
| Christopher Plummer, Leigh Berry. |
The
culprit, most agreed, was Michael J. Lewis’s pedestrian, derivative music,
which only served to underscore the unnecessary tampering that the play had
undergone. As Kerr, among others, observed, most of “the tunes that supplant
some of Rostand’s elaborately phrased setpieces . . . are a shade less
exhilarating than sheer language might have been.” Or, as Brendan Gill put it, “Rostand’s
bittersweet lightness of tone is made heavy by the explicitness of song.”
For
Plummer, the full red carpet of homage was rolled out. The man could do anything
well, the critics agreed, from tossing off an epigram with aplomb, to dancing
through a grueling dueling scene, to romancing a longed-for mistress with
quivering poignancy, to joking about his nose in the most superheroic fashion.
 |
| Paul Berget, Tim Nissen, Christopher Plummer, Leigh Berry, Anita Dangler. |
Typical
of the benisons he inspired was Harold Clurman’s: “He is a spectacularly
endowed actor. He is handsome, he handles the rapier flashily . . . , he sings
well, he has bravado, a fine speaking voice, humor, intelligence, a feeling for
language, and an admirable sense of the stage.” Yet Clurman was constrained to
say, as was Kerr, that the demands of the role and the staging made the
performance a spectacular technical feat lacking Cyrano’s internal
reverberations, “the regret and sorrow, the real sadness and its compensation
through pride.”
Plummer
won Best Actor awards from the Outer Critics Circle, Drama Desk, and Tony for
his efforts, while his Roxana, Leigh Berry, was granted a Tony nomination for
best Featured Actress, Musical. Others involved in the large company included Arnold
Soboloff as Ragueneau, Mark Lamos as Christian, James Blendick as Le Bret,
Anita Dangler as Roxana’s Duenna, Louis Turenne as de Guiche, and, in the minor
role of “Foodseller,” Tovah Feldshuh.
Previous
entries:
Abelard and
Heloise
Absurd Person
Singular
AC/DC
“Acrobats”
and “Line”
The Advertisement/
All My Sons
All Over
All Over Town
All the Girls Came
Out to Play
Alpha Beta
L’Amante Anglais
Ambassador
American Gothics
Amphitryon
And Miss Reardon
Drinks a Little
And They Put
Handcuffs on the Flowers
And Whose Little
Boy Are You?
Anna K.
Anne of Green
Gables
Antigone
Antiques
Any Resemblance to Persons Living or Dead
Applause
Ari
As You Like It
Augusta
The Au Pair Man
Baba Goya [Nourish the Beast]
The Ballad of Johnny Pot
Barbary Shore
The Bar that Never Closes
The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel
The Beauty Part
The Beggar’s Opera
Behold! Cometh the Vanderkellens
Be Kind to People Week
Berlin to Broadway with Kurt Weill
Bette Midler’s Clams on a Half-Shell Revue
Black Girl
Black Light Theatre of Prague
Black Picture Show
Black Sunlight
The Black Terror
Black Visions
Les Blancs
Blasts and Bravos: An Evening with H,L.
Mencken
Blood
Bluebeard
Blue Boys
Bob and Ray—The Two and Only
Boesman and Lena
The Boy Who Came to Leave
Bread
A Breeze from the Gulf
Brief Lives
Brother Gorski
Brothers
Bullshot Crummond
Bunraku
The Burnt Flower Bed
Butley
Button, Button
Buy Bonds, Buster
The Cage
Camille
Candide (1)
Candide (2)
The Candyapple
Captain Brassbound’s Conversion
The Caretaker
La Carpa de los Raquichis
The Carpenters
The Castro Complex
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
The Changing Room
Charles Abbott and Son
Charley’s Aunt
Charlie Was Here and Now He’s Gone
Chemin de Fer
The Cherry Orchard
The Chickencoop Chinaman
The Children
Children! Children!
Children in the Rain
Children of the Wind
The Children’s Mass
A Chorus Line
The Chronicle of Henry VI: Part 1, Part
II,
The Circle
Clarence Darrow
Cold Feet
Conditions of Agreement
Coney Island Cycle
The Constant Wife
The Contractor
The Contrast
The Constant Wife
The Country Girl
Crazy Now
The Creation of the
World and Other Business
Creeps
Crown Matrimonial
The Crucible
Crystal and Fox