April 19–26, 2001

theater

Long Nose

Cyrano

Arden Theatre Co., 40 N. 2nd St., through May 13, 215-922-1122

More a behind-the-scenes how-to demo than a real play, this import from Seattle Children’s Theatre (which in turn imported it from Belgium) is, to my mind, the worst kind of children’s theater: It interests no one. This adaptation is too self-conscious and confusing to fascinate young audiences who wouldn’t know the story and it’s too damned boring to appeal to anybody else. The "target audience," as one of the actors said in the post-show talkback, is junior high and high school kids: lots o’ luck. Only an hour and 15 minutes, it feels like a week.

Based on the famous French love story Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand, a highly romantic melodrama full of shadowed gardens and plumed hats and swords and veils and deeds of high heroism and heartbreaking sacrifice, this show strips it of everything except a piece of the plot: Cyrano loves his beautiful cousin Roxanne who is smitten with a young handsome soldier named Christian who is, unbeknownst to her, a dolt. Cyrano, who feels that Roxanne will never love him because he has a gigantic nose, writes eloquent love letters for Christian to deliver to Roxanne, and carries his secret love to the grave.

In this production there are three actors who play all the parts: Todd Jefferson Moore is Cyrano, a gaunt, unromantic and graceless hero; Kari McGee has little to do but cast sidelong glances; Alban Dennis plays many roles, most of which seem to involve crooked walks and are nearly indistinguishable from one another. They wear exceedingly odd and ugly costumes (the point apparently is to make it look makeshift, as though they found old clothes in an attic — more like a garage sale if you ask me) and they make all the sound effects (rain, gunshots, swordfights, footsteps) with equipment parked on stage — this, apparently, to make sure that absolutely no theatrical magic happens onstage at any time to delight us in any way.

The theater people who are always lamenting that young people don’t go to the theater and don’t care about theater have only themselves to thank if the theater those young people see is tedious self-important anti-art like this Cyrano. And that the Arden is suddenly importing shows rather than producing them strikes me as a dangerous development in the Philadelphia theatrical community.

—Toby Zinman