Cyrano--a New Adaptation by Erica Schmidt at the New Group

I'm delighted to report that Cyrano, director Erica Schmidt's bold adaptation of Rostand's classic, is an innovative, compelling reworking of the original. As a lifelong fan of the original (José Ferrer was my first Cyrano, and until now my favorite), I've always loved the play, and when I hear it was to be adapted into a musical, I was. . . concerned. (Wrongly; the score by Aaron Deesner and Bryce Dessner is admirable; the lyrics by Matt Berlinger and Carin Besser are as well). Then I heard that Peter Dinklage was to take on the part, I was...intrigued. I thought Dinklage could be a great Cyrano--if the script let him.

It did, and he is.

From his first bellowing denunciation, to his sharp pull of the heartstrings at the very end, this is a Cyrano to remember. He's as witty as Ferrer, but exceeds his in the emotional nuances. Cyrano's fear, his self-loathing that motivates his heroic feats--all these feel organic and fully realized. Cyrano's bravura is a defense mechanism, as Dinklage plays the role--in part. Because Cyrano's repugnance at time-serving, compromise, and lack of gallantry--these are deeply held views that define the gallant man he has created himself to be, despite the world's disdain. And these views put him on a collision course with the Duke de Guiche (A first-rate Ritchie Coster, in a nuanced performance, at turns a comic monster, an ogre of exploitation, and a dangerous foe. But also a man in love, and one who comes to have a deep admiration for Cyrano).

Cyrano's love, Roxanne, played by a luminous Jasmine Cephas-Jones is stronger than in most versions of the story and neither Cyrano nor Christian (Blake Jenner, a strong, solid performance) can refuse her anything.

But the surprise of the show is that Ms. Schmidt has made some risky directorial choices, and they all come romping home successfully. First, she severs the link between Cyrano and the 17th Century in which Rostand set his play and the real man (no, really!) lived. Rather than unmooring the play, it sets it in a non-specific but nonetheless concrete world adjacent to ours, in which in the first act the soldiers evoke heroic musketeers (d'Artagnan, a character in Rostand's play, does not appear in Schmidt's adaptation), but in the second act evoke the American Civil War. Rather like Christopher Fry's The Lady's Not for Burning, this Cyrano is all of a piece, sealed off from our time.

The choreography by Jeff and Rick Kuperman--which is superb--compresses Cyrano's battle against 100 men into a shadow dance, music and rhythm depicting Cyrano's strikes again his many foes, and their gradual defeat. Similarly, the workers at the pastry shop heighten the emotional resonance of Cyrano's critical conversation with Roxanne, and then with Christian.

The last scene--Roxanne at the convent, de Guiche visiting her, and Cyrano's newspaper--begins softly, and ends with the tragic ending we knew was coming. As the leaves fall, Dinklage poignantly asks, "Can they rest, now?"

Cyrano finally can, as well.

The whole production has a feel of--appropriately enough--Cocteau's magical Beauty and the Beast (1946), and like it, is suffused with enchantment, in this case, through the brilliant staging and the music and choreography which take us away from the mundane world, even that of the 17th Century, and into the magical worlds created by artists like Cocteau, Fry--and Erica Schmidt, whose vision for Cyrano is fresh and challenging (this production censures Cyrano for his pride, instead of applauding it) and yet feels as old as tragedy itself.

A sublime evening at the theater, and one that lingers.

Farewell to the Minister of Magic: Robert Hardy, 29 October 1925 – 3 August 2017

That's Robert Hardy as Siegfried Farnon and Peter Davison as his brother Tristan at the outbreak of World War II in All Creatures Great and Small, the well-beloved British series that first introduced me to him, and to Davison, too, come to think of it.

He died on August 3, and somehow I didn't see the news until today--in fact, I was looking him up to verify my recollection that he had played John Fothergill, the eccentric, aesthete, and innkeeper. (I have two of the books he wrote, one inscribed by him; he's worth a post of his own someday.) And yes, Hardy played the part, and did so brilliantly. It was but one role in a storied and multi-faceted career--from actor to Laird, to amateur historian, who authored what appears to be the definitive work on the longbow. On the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt, it was Hardy, who had memorably played Henry V for the RSC in his younger days, who Westminster Abbey asked to read the prologue from Act IV of the play.

He was, by all accounts, a great Shakespearean actor--the 1960s edition of the Tragedies and the Histories I bought (when I was in my teens) from the long-gone Barnes & Noble Sales Annex was illustrated with photos from various classic productions; Robert Hardy featured in several.

Hardy's subtlety as an actor doesn't get enough praise; it's understandable in that he's primarily thought of by filmgoers as Cornelius Fudge, the Minister of Magic, from the Harry Potter films. Hilarious though it was, Hot Metal didn't call for much subtlety, either. And Siegfried was often played fortissimo, though there were wonderfully delicate moments, like that heading this post.

But watch him in The Shooting Party. Or, as I pointed out earlier this year, in "Edward the King", where he played Prince Albert:

Albert, in particular, is given a complexity he might otherwise have lacked by the quicksilver performance of Robert Hardy (most noted for his Siegfried Farnon in All Creatures Great and Small and more recently his performance as Cornelius Fudge in the Harry Potter movies). As the Prince Consort, Albert starts in a position of weakness (not unlike Matt Smith as Prince Philip in The Crown), but he obtains a modicum of power by using what would be in Victorian literature feminine strategies--he lets Victoria see that her tantrums have hurt him, he rejoices in the domestic, he even withholds intimacy (Victoria, the morning after a tantrum, plaintively reproaches him, "you didn't come to me last night.").

When their son Albert Edward (Bertie) is born, Albert plans a fanatically demanding, no respite, education for their son. It's portrayed as almost sadistic (Magnus's biography is more charitable) and the frustrated Bertie fails at it repeatedly. Albert keeps him to it, with terrible persistence. But Hardy keeps him from devolving into a Gradgrind. His affection for Victoria (and forgiveness of her outbursts), his enjoyment of their children, gives him a likability that makes clear that his mistreatment of Bertie is not out of cruelty, but misplaced zeal.

Later, when Bertie is an adult, and Bertie has been caught in an affair with an actress (the first of many), the notoriously strait-laced Albert confronts his son. Albert respects Bertie's refusal to tell him who set up the party where he met his mistress, and puts the matter behind them. Instead of the martinet, we finally see the worried father, who gently admits that he has been so intent on training his son, that he has not provided the affection that Bertie needs. He anxiously seeks to reassure Bertie that he has been motivated by love, but admits his failure to articulate it. The two reconcile, with the focus not on Bertie's sins, but on Albert's.

It's an extraordinary performance, well matched by [Annette] Crosbie's more overtly histrionic masterpiece [as Victoria]. Hardy deftly underplays when she goes hard, but scintillates when he is with the children (other than Bertie). They match each other well.

So when I bid farewell to Robert Hardy--a little late, I admit--as the Minister of Magic, it's not to Cornelius Fudge; Hardy was Minister of Magic in his own right, long before he played that part.

Ave, Albee! Ave Antush!

I know, I know--the late Edward Albee would hate my focusing on his 1962 play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in writing about him, but I'm afraid I can't help it. You see, when I read the play in my Modern American Drama class at Fordham--

--Half a mo. I'm afraid another grace note has to creep in here. You see, the professor for that class, John V. Antush, died at the end of August, and deserves a look in. He was a gentleman who was also a gentle man, and yet he pushed you in class. (I took both Modern American Drama and Modern European Drama with Dr. Antush, so I know what I'm talking about.) For example, in MAD, when we covered Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun, he made the almost entirely white class read lengthy extracts of the play. He assigned me to read the sequence in Act III when the African-American Walter Lee Younger is tempted to take the money offered him not to move to a white neighborhood, and practices doing it, "in profoundly anguished imitation of the slow-witted movie stereotype." It was bloody harrowing for me, and I think, the other members of the class. Which, I strongly suspect, was the bloody point. But Dr. Antush also expanded our horizons in more pleasant ways. He arranged for the MAD class to see Talley & Son in its first NYC production, and to participate in a Q-and-A wit the class. I've never known anyone more in love with the theater's ability to bring empathy and to open new vistas.

--but I digress. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? blew my mind in college, sufficiently so that when I got the chance to do my first show as a director, that's what I picked. The rights fell through, and something else had to be done (a director's workshop, a miscellany of plays with several students directing excerpts from their favorite plays--you know, I'm really much better when helping others to try to realize their ambitions than when playing a lone hand.) But the play held my mind--and my heart (not sentimentally, more in the "did they really do that?" vein. Years later, I saw the Steppenwolf production excerpted up top with good theater buddy Karen Clark, and saw what seems to me almost the platonic idea of Albee's richest (to me) play. Frothy and funny to start, with the laugh lines suddenly becoming cruel, and the jokes no longer funny, and then--Martha and George are wounding each other (and Nick and Honey, as collateral damage) with, to steal a phrase from T.H. White, "words, their cruel bright weapons," which had so lately been funny, now laying waste.

My other Albee highlight was appearing in a student film of The Zoo Story as Peter. It was the last acting I've done, or am likely to do. It was--interesting. Finding Peter, his anxiety and conformity, and being challenged to the character's breaking point--yeah, Albee (and a very gifted student director, and a helluva Jerry) got a good performance out of this uncured (to date) ham.