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A SAMUEL FRENCH, LTD. TITLE
Full-Length Play, Drama / 4w, 10m plus ensemble
By Edmond Rostand Freely adapted by Martin Crimp
In Martin Crimp’s radical new adaptation of Edmond Rostand’s masterwork, Cyrano seduces in raps and rhymes, using his linguistic brilliance to help another man win the heart of his one true love.
Image: 2019 West End Production (Marc Brenner)
Winner! 2020 Olivier Award for Best Revival
This “breathtakingly exciting” (Evening Standard) theatrical tour-de-force captures timeless passion through spoken word, contemporary poetry and raw physicality. Cyrano seduces in raps and rhymes, using his linguistic brilliance to help another man win the heart of his one true love, championing – above all – his own unbridled love for words.
A genius with language, Cyrano secretly loves the radiant Roxane, but she loves the beautiful but inarticulate Christian. Convinced of his own ugliness, Cyrano offers to act as go-between, setting in motion a poignant and often hilarious love triangle in which each character is torn between the lure of physical attraction and the seductive power of words.
Martin Crimp’s adaptation of Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac premiered at the Playhouse Theatre, London, on November 27, 2019. Directed by Jamie Lloyd, the production starred James McAvoy in the title role. In 2022, Cyrano de Bergerac returned to London at the Harold Pinter Theatre. It later transferred to the Theatre Royal Glasgow and made its American premiere at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
ALASTAIR – Man CHRISTIAN – Man CYRANO – Man DE GUICHE – Man DENISE (STUDENT) – Woman LE BRET – Man LIGNIÈRE – Man MADAME RAGUENEAU – Woman MAN – Man MARIE-LOUISE (STUDENT) – Woman MONTFLEURY – Man PRIEST – Man ROXANE – Woman VALVERT – Man
The following roles can be played by actors of any gender: ANNOYING PERSON ARMANDE (STUDENT) AUDIENCE MEMBERS AND PEOPLE WHO SHOUT FROM THE AUDITORIUM FENCING REFEREE GROUP OF SOLDIERS* THEATRE OWNER USHER WOMAN SENT BY ROXANE
* The GROUP OF SOLDIERS can be played by actors of any gender, but men should make up the majority.
Paris, 1640.
★★★★★ “Mesmerising... glittering... unforgettable.” – The Times
★★★★★ “I defy anyone not to fall in love with it.” – The Telegraph
★★★★★ “Funny, thrilling and deeply moving.” – WhatsOnStage
★★★★★ “The most breathtakingly exciting show in London right now.” – Evening Standard
★★★★★ “A beloved tale of yearning, beauty, and desire... a weaponless marvel of language.” – The Observer
“Alive with the love of language... This is not your grand-mère’s Cyrano. Replacing Rostand’s stately 12-syllable alexandrines with jumpier rhythms, its euphemisms with plain speech and its perfect rhymes with ones so slant they serve as italics, Crimp rockets the action to a world drunk on language as it’s actually spoken. It’s also a world in which, as the baker Ragueneau (now a poet, too) predicts, ‘There’s going to be a new force of words’... I spent most of the production’s swift two acts fully engaged in its humor, pathos and fury.” – The New York Times
“A revivifying take on Cyrano. With a whip-smart script by Martin Crimp, the production highlights a cool new vocabulary for Edmond Rostand’s sentimental monument to love.” – The Washington Post
“A pleasure… Adapter Martin Crimp... has, in his sixties, written an absolute banger in his startling adaptation of Rostand.” – Time Out New York
“An alternately joyous and heartrending celebration of language – even the sword fights are rendered with nothing more than pointed words. Every line of dialogue... is either a delight, an arrow, or both, from era-defying comic asides... to a wrenchingly gorgeous profession of love rendered truthfully yet in deception.” – Deadline
“The sexiest, most thrilling production of the season... strips the material down to the essential – the sword by which everyone in its 1640 Paris must live or die: the power of words.” – Theatrely
“Heart-stopping... the program says that the text is a ‘new version’ by Martin Crimp. Yes, well, in the sense that fire can be considered a ‘new version’ of wood.” – Vulture
“This version of the play... is more about Cyrano de Bergerac's first love: language... Crimp updates the language to incorporate more modern poetry, creating a spoken-word rendition set in 1640 that plays with current pop-culture references.” – Entertainment Weekly
★★★★★ “Classics purists will still find the rhyming-couplet poetry of Rostand’s play intact, but Martin Crimp's freewheeling adaptation will also delight the Gen-Z crowd: 19th-century verse gives way to 21st-century spoken-word poetry and rap, including plenty of red-hot roasts.” – New York Theatre Guide
Cyrano de Bergerac: National Theatre Live Trailer
James McAvoy on Cyrano de Bergerac
The Cast of Cyrano de Bergerac Describe the Play
Cyrano de Bergerac: Opening Night - London Theatre Direct
Martin Crimp was born in 1956 and began writing for theatre in the 1980s. His plays include: When we have sufficiently tortured each other (2019), Men Asleep (2018), The Rest Will be Familiar To You From Cinema (2013, voted by Germany’s Theater heute best foreign play of the ...
Antoinette Chinonye Nwandu
by Multiple Authors
Multiple Authors
by Anton Chekhov, Martin...
Anton Chekhov, Martin Crimp