“Why is this RSC reinvention of Edmond Rostand’s much-revived 1897 play so unusually enchanting,” asked Dominic Maxwell in The Times . Is it Adrian Lester , never better, as the large-nosed, “gilet-sporting, verse-spouting” soldier of the title, “handy in a duel, even handier with a turn of phrase”? Is it Susannah Fielding as his “ideal woman”, Roxane? Is it Simon Evans and the poet Debris Stevenson’s lively modern-language translation? Is it the humour, “which nestles this tragicomedy even at its saddest”? The truth is that nearly everything in Evans’ “huge-hearted production” is perfectly calibrated. Even the famous nose is nicely done: big enough for you to see why Cyrano, beneath the bravado, is deeply insecure – “but not so big that you spend time wondering how it stays on”.

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