Cyrano

Saturday evening we went to see Kevin Kline in a preview of “Cyrano” which was based on Anthony Burgess’ translation of Rostand’s classic. The acting was great, the play (as, from my perspective, the original piece by Rostand) mediocre. I found myself waiting in the first act for the one good exchange coming-- between the Comte de Guiche and de Bergerac in which the Comte says that when you fight with windmills they may “swing round their huge arms and cast you down into the mire” and Cyrano adds “or up, among the stars!”

In the second act--mercifully shorter-- I waited for Cyrano’s wonderful lines toward the end:

“ What's that you say? Useless? Useless? But one does not fight merely to win! You have it wrong... One fights for far more than the mere hope of winning. Better, far better to know that the fight is totally irreparably, incorrigibly in vain!... Are you there too, Stupidity? You above all others perhaps were predestined to get me in the end. But no, I'll Fight on, fight on, fight..."

But before we could get to those lines, there were staging difficulties and the play actually stopped for a while so things could be fixed. Watching the tech guys out struggling with the large curtain that had gotten caught was the most interesting part of the evening! Other than that, not much stood out from the play (though in truth I was dead tired and that could have had an effect on how I felt about what I was seeing). Opening night is November 1^st so I’ll be interested in hearing what the critics think then.