Is Long Beach Shakespeare Company having an identity crisis? This year, five of their 12 offerings are live radio shows, while only two of the five fully staged productions they’re mounting are by the Bard. And though the other three plays are based on “classic” texts, it’s nearly 10 minutes into their Cyrano de Bergerac before we really start hearing Edmund Rostand’s words [trans. Brian Hooker], so heavily does this show lean into director Renée Schwarz’s metafictional conceit, which has us watching a theatre troupe in final rehearsals with a lead who disappears into his big-nosed role with a tad too much panache.
Whatever’s going on with LBSC’s identity, it’s no crisis, as their Cyrano de Bergerac is yet another non-Shakespeare winner, a paragon of strong vision, great casting, and doing more with less.
You know the premise: brilliant, accomplished, querulous Cyrano (Paul D. Flores) is in love with his beautiful, well-read cousin Roxane (Julianne Holmquist), but in a folly of youth she’s smitten from afar by dashing town newcomer Christian (Shane Weikel), despite the fact that they’ve never exchanged so much as a hello. Christian’s a nice-enough guy but no great mind, plus he’s completely tongue-tied around women. Imagining that his prominent proboscis renders him too ugly to be loved by any woman — let alone the fair Roxane! — he helps Christian woo her by epistolary means.
It’s a great story with lots of clever bits, but how well Rostand’s 1897 prosody works for 21st-century theatregoers may be another matter. (For me, Shakespeare holds up far better despite predating Rostand by three centuries.) Apparently this was also on Schwarz’s mind, who, after being asked to direct this show, tells us in the program notes that she “got to thinking about how to make [it] feel relevant and new for a modern audience [so] the comedy of the script could really shine through.” Hence the meta that opens the show and threads its way up to intermission.
That the meta doesn’t fully make sense fully doesn’t matter — it’s great fun. While purists may be pulling their hair out, Schwarz and co. manufacture an impromptu energy, every moment full of life. The meta complements (rather than collides with) the Rostand, and both sides of that coupling offer many moments of delight.
That delight is in play even before Paul D. Flores graces the stage. Playing an actor playing a part in a rehearsal in which he acts as if he’s not an actor but actually Cyrano, he immediately shifts the onstage dynamics, as his (meta)castmates fearfully jump in and out of character as they try to keep pace while Paul (as he’s fittingly known in Schwarz’s meta) treads the boards with an actual sword, seemingly looking for an excuse to use it. Flores’s (actual) castmates do keep up. The 105 minutes before intermission never drag for a second — quite an achievement when you consider this exceeds the full runtime of many a play.
Part of what makes Flores so great is his understatement. Because Rostand has written Cyrano as larger than life, amplifying Cyrano’s grandiosity would be to stray into caricature; but by simply transmitting what’s on the page, Flores keeps Cyrano fully human. And he employs that same understatement to let us glimpse Paul as he clocks the efforts of his castmates to stay on the rails during this ride with this madman of method. He never winks at the audience or otherwise tries to sell the absurdity of the situation. Despite being the cynosure, he’s the most understated person on stage, and this juxtaposition creates a perfect symbiosis.
Ironically, it’s the hour after intermission — which is almost pure Rostand, with the meta-troupe performing Acts IV and V of Cyrano in full costume — that is the riskiest. The pre-intermission meta was funny, plus the first three acts of Rostand’s Cyrano is where you find most of the humor. With such a setup, there was no avoiding having the proceedings close on a drier note. But Schwarz and co. keep things moving well enough, and they have sufficient facility with the Rostand for us to hang in there and appreciate the inevitable, touching twists that bring us home.
It’s no mean feat to make a three-hour production of a 19th-century play feel fresh. But Long Beach Shakespeare Company has done just that.
Cyrano de Bergerac at Long Beach Shakespeare Company
Times: Fri–Sat 8:00 p.m., Sun 2:00 p.m.
The show runs through August 29.
Cost: $21.50 to $31.50 (including fees)
Details: (562) 997-1494; LBshakespeare.org
Venue: Helen Borgers Theatre, 4250 Atlantic Ave., Long Beach