Review of Cyrano de Bergerac (1990) by Edith N — 22 Apr 2008

The trouble I go through for you people. First, the library mislaid the copy they'd put on hold for me. Next, the copy they sent me was scratched. Which, incidentally, put me back at the bottom of the hold list, thank you very much. So I waited a month or more, and here we are. The Depardieu [i]Cyrano[/i]. The most famous French play performed by a great French actor. And is it worth it?

Why, yes, in fact. For one, Depardieu isn't a famous actor for no reason. He's a talented man. A very talented man. He does a great Cyrano, and the makeup's a little less over-the-top than a lot of others'. Yeah, that's the requisite big nose, but it's not sodding enormous, and it looks like it belongs on his face. The other thing is . . . Depardieu's not an enormously attractive man going in. An attractive man with a big nose is still pretty attractive. But a plain man with a big nose--there's someone we can go through five acts about. The Roxane is lovely and placid, and the Christian is a man to swoon over. Further, the costumes are great, and the sets mostly aren't. The abbey at the end, from what I've read is a real abbey. There are great, sweeping halls. There is a real small farmhouse where the cadets wait during the Siege of Arras (a real historican event that took place in 1640).

Has anyone else noticed how childish Roxane is? I mean, seriously. She's a spoiled, petty creature. It's a lot easier to compose flowery letters than to speak flowery phrases on the spot, but if Christian can't, it's a sign that he doesn't love her, that he's [i]never[/i] loved her. Come to that, not all intelligent men can speak in the kind of terms that she expects. I've known lots of intelligent men and only a few who can write poetry--and not all poetry is love poetry, as Christian implies shortly after we first meet him.

This is a good translation. The poetry of the original carries over into the new version beautifully. I mean, I don't know how [i]accurate the translation is, given I don't speak much French, but it's lovely. The rhythm is good, and the rhyme is good, and the words are clearly chosen with care to give us the right feel for the characters. Too often, I've noticed, accuracy is placed over beauty of translation, and in a play about poetry, that's a bad idea.

I've not yet seen a version of this that really, truly rises above the others. However, I think the story is enough to make it necessary for everyone to pick one and see it, even if it's the Steve Martin.