Overview
CYRANO DE BERGERAC is brand new adaptation in verse of the famous crowd-pleasing tale of love, honor, and panache, by way of a warrior-poet with a huge nose and a huge complex about it.
Casting & Production
Casting
While as large a cast as possible is encouraged to bring to life the world of this play, no smaller an ensemble than 16 actors should be used.
Setting:
Paris and Arras, 1640 (Act I-IV); and 1655 (Act V)
Run Time:
3 hours
From the Playwright
A Note On This Adaptation:
Edmond Rostand brought the verisimilitude of a naturalist painter’s eye to the five tableaux vivants which constitute the five acts of his great play, CYRANO DE BERGERAC. Some of these contained satirical comments or inside jokes about the various mis en scene presented, their meanings now lost to a modern world. In adapting Rostand’s play, I kept as much of his naturalist’s vision as to paint the scene, scaling back on some of the details. Consequently, there are deeper cuts in the text of the first two acts than those subsequent.
As for Rostand’s poetry — I’ve sought to create a dramatic motivation for the rhyme, rather than using it throughout. Cyrano’s world is one always on the verge of rhyming; it has poetry in its veins but it needs Cyrano himself to launch it into full bloom. It is passion itself which creates the rhyme in this version of the play. The pentameter is the beat of Cyrano’s own heart.
—David Grimm
