Cyrano de Bergerac (Crimp)

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Cyrano de Bergerac (Crimp)

Full-Length Play, Drama  /  4w, 10m

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)

Cyrano de Bergerac (Crimp)

  • Cast Size
    Cast Size
    4w, 10m
  • Duration
    Duration
    More than 120 minutes (2 hours)
  • SubGenre
    Subgenre
    Adaptation (Stage & Screen)
  • Audience
    Target Audience
    Adult
Accolades
Accolades
  • Winner! 2020 Olivier Award for Best Revival

Details

Summary

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.

History
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.
ROXANE
CYRANO
LIGNIÈRE
CRISTIAN
LEILA RAGUENEAU
LE BRET DE GUICHE
ALASTAIR
VALVERT
MONTFLEURY
THEATRE OWNER
USHER
ANNOYING PERSON
FENCING REFEREE
AUDIENCE MEMBERS AND PEOPLE WHO SHOUT FROM THE AUDITORIUM
WOMAN SENT BY ROXANE
MARIE-LOUISE (STUDENT)
ARMANDE (STUDENT)
DENISE (STUDENT)
GROUP OF SOLDIERS
PRIEST
  • Time Period Contemporary, Present Day, 17th Century
  • Setting Paris, 1640.
  • Features Contemporary Costumes/Street Clothes
  • Duration More than 120 minutes (2 hours)
  • Cautions
    • Mild Adult Themes

Media

★★★★★ “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

Videos

  • Cyrano de Bergerac: National Theatre Live Trailer youtube thumbnail

    Cyrano de Bergerac: National Theatre Live Trailer

  • James McAvoy on Cyrano de Bergerac youtube thumbnail

    James McAvoy on Cyrano de Bergerac

  • The Cast of Cyrano de Bergerac Describe the Play youtube thumbnail

    The Cast of Cyrano de Bergerac Describe the Play

  • Cyrano de Bergerac: Opening Night - London Theatre Direct youtube thumbnail

    Cyrano de Bergerac: Opening Night - London Theatre Direct

Photos

  • Cyrano de Bergerac (Crimp)

    Image: 2019 West End Production (Marc Brenner)

  • Cyrano de Bergerac (Crimp)

    Image: 2019 West End Production (Marc Brenner)

  • Cyrano de Bergerac (Crimp)

    Image: 2019 West End Production (Marc Brenner)

Licensing & Materials

  • Minimum Fee: £85 per performance plus VAT when applicable.

Scripts

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Authors

Edmond Rostand

Edmond Rostand (1868–1918) was a French poet and dramatist, best known for his 1897 play Cyrano de Bergerac. Rostand’s other works include: The Red Glove (1888); Les Musardises (1890); The Two Pierrots, or The White Supper (1891); Les Romanesques (1894), which was the basis f ...
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Martin Crimp

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 ...

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