Cyrano de Bergerac by Martin Crimp6/4/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() Perhaps you’ve read this story of two military men, one hot but not so bright, one brilliant but grotesque, who, with their better powers combined, woo a poetry-hungry woman. The full weight of the production relies in part on expectations around a familiar work. Whereas Cyrano typically ends literally with the word, this one, helmed by James McAvoy in the titular role, ends in omission instead, Cyrano de Bergerac’s panache defeated finally by the thing that supplied him with it-his overwhelming, artful masculinity. ![]() Though to a person, everyone in director Jamie Lloyd’s tight cast has it, it’s been slightly demoted in Martin Crimp’s engrossing rewrite, which David Binder, BAM’s artistic director, was instrumental in bringing to Brooklyn. The word panache-then meaning the plume of feathers in Cyrano’s cap-is central to the original and most of the adaptations thereafter. And it was Senator Chuck Schumer, while toasting in his Brooklyn brogue, who taught me something missed in my years of American education. Did you know that Edmond Rostand’s 19th-century drama in verse Cyrano de Bergerac is what popularized the French word panache in the English-speaking world? This was news to me Thursday night at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s annual gala, which celebrated its brand-new president, Gina Duncan, and extended a hero’s welcome to the cast of the Olivier-winning production Cyrano de Bergerac, from London’s West End. ![]()
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