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October 17, 2007 - A Catered Affair - Out of Town
October 31, 2007
"And By Any Production,
Should Have Smelt As Sweet..."Blood is about to be spilt on the Richard Rodgers Theater stage… and it’s not just Cyrano’s, his agitators, or his comrades in arms’. Jennifer Garner will be sliced to ribbons by the New York press, followed by Daniel Sunjata, and yes, even a drop or two from Kevin Kline. And at the hilt of the blade is no pompous foe or self-deluded ego play, but the show’s director, David Leveaux, who brings a Donmar Warehouse level of risk to this version of Cyrano, breathing all kinds of new potential into the material, but alas, sending the whole pretty effort crashing to the ground, miscast, ill-conceived, and a bitter disappointment.
What is so galling about it is that it feels as though Leveaux almost tricked Garner and Sunjata into the abusive reviews they are about to get by spinning his idea of a Cyrano that was not quite so much of its time and more of ours. In more than a small way, this show seems to set out to be a staged embodiment of the spirit of Steve Martin’s take on Cyrano, Roxanne, combined with the grimy period reality that Terry Gilliam brings to his productions – before the glistening fantasy arrives – as well as being a surprising current cliché of bare back walls, minimalist sets, and gotcha lighting effects.
I kind of loved the notion, as it rolled out, of “that Alias girl” as a Roxanne with fight, who is more than a match for the boys, a notion embodied by one of her first bits of business onstage, which is to defend herself from an errant swipe of the blade during Cyrano’s famous “And then, I hit” speech/sword fight, using Cyrano’s scabbard. In that sequence, Garner’s Roxanne’s first, she is more Natalie Wood in Rebel Without A Cause than anything else. And that, I think, Ms. Garner could be quite successful at playing through the evening.
But it is in the opportunity of this performance that Leveaux most clearly misses the mark. Garner’s Roxanne is more feisty and more of a selfish child than others I have experienced. But it is as though Leveaux really, really wants to go there, but simply cannot allow himself to deconstruct Rostand, even if Anthony Burgess’ quite interesting adaptation allows him to do so without changing a word.
It is the core, for me, of criticism and understanding of drama. What are the characters motivations? Why do they move forward? What are they adding to the story and to the emotional drama? These key questions are as important to Porky’s as to Schindler’s List in film and certainly, live and death on stage, where the tricks of the camera cannot be applied. Mel Brooks’ monster will come to life this fall because he is going somewhere, not because he is green, tall, and loathsome.
So if Roxanne is to be a vain and selfish child, envisioning herself as the era’s version of grrrrl power, that is interesting. Her masked-by-beauty-and-Cyrano’s-words Christian as a vain pretty boy from the OC is also interesting. (Daniel Sunjata, as Christian, was also left hanging by Leveaux, but not as severely.) Attempting this is to change Rostand’s traditional position of epic tragedy of honor and circumstance preventing love into more of a cruel farce about the false roles we vainly play, pretending to be greater creatures than we are.
The pieces of that puzzle could be fascinating. (HERE ARE SPOILERS IF YOU DON’T KNOW CYRANO AND DON’T WANT TO KNOW NOW.) A Roxanne who plays the role of tomboy, thinking she is progressive, while in truth simply wanting to bed the fairest boy she sees, who mocks the sexual interest that any idiot can see that Cyrano has, turning him into the “gay best friend,” to fulfill her hidden lust before playing the even greater role of victim who never will have sex (or children) as she vainly pines for the man she never really wanted.
A Cyrano who is truly pathetic, so overshadowed by his code that he cannot ever live his life… a perpetual victim of therapy, working through his inability to love until the very day he dies.
Christian, in this production, is probably closest to breakthrough, though he is underplayed to little effect.
It would not be your mother’s Cyrano, but considering that the effort is clearly being made to take this idea somewhere new, based on the casting choices if nothing else, it is breathtakingly lacking in any new turns.
(End Spoilers)
But there are major malfunctions in Leveaux’s thinking throughout. After all, what kind of fool hires Prince Humperdinck (Chris Sarandon) to play the Comte de Guiche in Cyrano and then chooses not to have him chew the scenery? It is a brilliant conceit on its face, but Leveaux won’t pull the trigger.
And then there is Kline himself, a truly great stage performer… who is 100% not a word dazzler. Klin's magic, now as always, is in his full body in motion, words being batted at you as if in a tennis match. To put him in a chair to recite his last letter to Roxanne by heart is impossible for him. It is just not what he does. And you can tell that Leveaux (and probably Kline) figured this out as they bring him back to his feet to fence his enemy’s once more, allowing Kline to get his full back swing going as the play moves to its end.
It’s not that Kline could not have made a great Cyrano, especially in a reformist version, but that his skills needed to be directed towards it. And for the most part, they are not. His entrance – and if Leveaux shows any great skill here, it is in his entrances and act openings – is the top of his game. But even then, we are seeing a Kline restrained.
The magic of theater is that it is alive. And here, at one moment, Kline stumbled rising to his feet when his scabbard caught the corner of a stage piece. His improv of looking back to the scenery what dun him in once, then twice, than a third time, generated the most heart-felt laughs of the evening. That is Kevin Kline. Cyrano as The Pirate King – Kline’s breakout performance on Broadway – would have been a pleasure to watch… if only because it would have been a pleasure for him to perform. And yes, it might have been seen as spitting on Rostand’s grave. But better that interpretation than a show that plays it so close to the vest but makes brave and massive missteps in casting against type with no clear resolve.
This is not to say that Kline doesn’t have his moments or that he isn’t still the most compelling figure on a stage. But he is not well served by the production, making his effort the biggest waste of all.
I was fortunate enough to see the last Broadway version of Cyrano, all the way back in 1984, with Derek Jacobi as Cyrano and Sinead Cusack as Roxanne in the traveling Royal Shakespeare Company’s version. I went back a second time, back when the price of a ticket hurt. Jacobi is one of those dialogue readers who could make the phonebook seem eloquent and with so much the better dialogue, it was a towering performance. Cusack’s Roxanne was quite elegant, which made up for her bad judgment and gave weight to her choice to cloister herself after losing her false-faced love… which also made Cyrano less the fool for having honored their secret.
And the tree… the stunning tree stage left… quietly dropping its leaves as it offered shade and the relentlessness of time. Leveaux also incorporates a tree on stage… and perhaps his own memories of the RSC production are why he chose to attempt this work at all. Ironically, as his red, red leaves fall through the final scene, it is overdone… not the subtle, irresistibly romantic, sad beauty of the original. The metaphor fits the whole production like a sad glove slapped across the face of a hopeful audience.
The most shocking thing is that the script for the RSC ’88 version… the very same Anthony Burgess translation and adaptation. This shows exactly how pliable the writing and this story are. And how easily misspent.
Speaking of spending, this Cyrano has a limited 10-week run. So I did the math about how that might work. Given the theater’s capacity, they have just over 100,000 seats available to sell at an average of about $80 a pop. So the production could be profitable - $8 million in - over just 10 weeks. Let’s hope for the producers’ sake that they have sold the majority of tickets before the reviews land.
But what really struck me is that as the television business has evolved in response to DVD sell-thru, in which a one-season series can be profitable now for the first time, this is the chance on Broadway to do, essentially, a rock tour. Kline draws the theater people, Garner draws the teenage girls and geek boys. They can do a show that really was meant for The Public on Broadway from the start, able to sell a large percentage of all of their tickets before the first review is released, and be profitable no matter what the critics – or the paying audience – has to say. Last night after the show, about 80 people piled in around the stage door, waiting to take a picture of a movie star and maybe get an autograph.
Too bad the show ending its prescribed run will not be a sadder day.
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October 17, 2007 - A Catered Affair - Out of Town
