"Great Performances" Cyrano de Bergerac (2008)

Director:

Matthew Diamond

Writers:

Edmond Rostand (play)
Anthony Burgess (translation and adaptation)

TV Series:

"Great Performances" (1972)

Original Air Date:

4 October 2008 (Season 37, Episode 8)

Genre:

Comedy | Drama | Music | Musical | Romance

Plot:

Plot Keywords:

Dance | Opera | Concert | Broadway Musical

Cast

Max Baker	...	Ragueneau
Stephen Balantzian	...	Gascony Cadet
Tom Bloom	...	Montfleury
Keith Eric Chappelle	...	Guard
Maclntyre Dixon	...	Capuchin / Jodelet / Gascony Cadet
Davis Duffield	...	Theatregoer's Son
Amefika El-Amin	...	Gascony Cadet
Piter Fattouche	...	Marquis de Brissaille (as Piter Marek)
Peter J. Fernandez	...	Captain Carbon de Castel-Jaloux (as Peter Jay Fernandez)
Jennifer Garner	...	Roxane
Kate Guyton	...	A Food Seller
Ginifer King	...	Sister Claire
Kevin Kline	...	Cyrano
Carman Lacivita	...	Valvert
Euan Morton	...	Ligniere
Lucas Papaelias	...	Cook / Cadet
Leenya Rideout	...	Lady / Singer / Nun
Fred Rose	...	Poet
Chris Sarandon	...	De Guiche
Thomas Schall	...	Theatregoer
Alexander Sovronsky	...	Musician / Cook / Cadet
Daniel Stewart Sherman	...	A Musketeer
Daniel Sunjata	...	Christian de Neuvillette
Baylen Thomas	...	Gascony Cadet
John Douglas Thompson	...	Le Bret
Concetta Tomei	...	Roxane's Duenna
Nance Williamson	...	Ragueneau's wife

Runtime:

USA:143 min

Country:

USA | Japan

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Company:

NHK Enterprises

Movie Connections:

Version of Roxanne (1987)

Unfortunate casting results in a somewhat lackluster production

My first response to the character of Cyrano de Bergerac in this version of the play was, "what a jerk." He just seems like a terrible bully. This wasn't my response to the Jose Ferrer movie, but it's my response now, although I'm not sure how much of that has to do with Kline's performance and how much has to do with how my attitudes have changed since I was in college.

I'll get back to Kline, but first I have to speak of Jennifer Garner's off kilter performance.

I understand the temptation to put a more modern spin on an old play, and turn demur heroines into feisty fireballs, but Garner's performance feels far more appropriate to a production of Annie Get Your Gun than to Cyrano. The problem is that Garner's Roxanne is so brash and brassy that she seems neither like someone who would be admired by every courtly man she met nor like someone who would prize elegant prose; she seems more like someone who would judge a man's appeal by his skills in shootin' and wrastlin'.

It is ideal for the audience to fall in love with Roxanne; I never even liked her much.

As for Kline, his performance lacks the grand sweep of Ferrer's. He is a very low key Cyrano, and while once again it is understandable to want to play with a character's traditional representation, it just doesn't work. I think this is why he seems like such a bully at the beginning. By underplaying the part, he doesn't sweep you up in his grandiosity and wit. Cyrano needs to be so much bigger than life that he seems justifiably unbound by convention.

I think ultimately Cyrano de Bergerac is not a play that lends itself to revisionist performances. You can play Shakespearean characters many different ways because there is always an ambiguity to the characters; you can endlessly debate purpose and motive. Rostand's play is very straightforward - it's little more than an excuse for a lot of clever dialog - and the characters are not deeply drawn enough to warrant trying to make them anything other than their surface appearance. And a production of the play in which Roxanne is a stronger, more masculine force than Cyrano simply cannot work.

That being said, it's still a well written play with a lot of of witty dialog and an engaging story, so it is still reasonably enjoyable. And for all my objections, the ending was quite touching. But this could have been so much better.