Cyrano de Bergerac by Rostand (Derek Jacobi 1985 TV) 15/17

Sinéad Cusack... Roxane
Derek Jacobi... Cyrano de Bergerac
Pete Postlethwaite... Ragueneau
John Carlisle... Duke de Grammont
John Bowe... Le Bret
Cathy Finlay... Sister Marthe
Penelope BeaumontMother Marguerite
Alexandra Brook... Sister Claire

Writers:
Edmond Rostand (play)
Anthony Burgess (translation)

Directed by Terry Hands
Original Music by Nigel Hess
Film Editing by David Martin
Production Design by Ralph Koltai
Costume Design by Alexander Reid

Alexander Guy Holborn Spiers writes:

It is in the development of a third quality that his originality appears viz., the handling of such inventions and devices as were discovered, more especially by the dramatists of the nineteenth century, to play upon our feelings by means of the material and the physical. He carries the use of such devices so far indeed that it amounts to little short of a substitution of dramatic methods. Rostand is, as we have seen, uniquely interested in depicting a state of feeling; he is naturally, therefore, obliged to portray an attitude of mind and is confronted with a problem not so very different, let us say, from that which at times confronted Shakespeare or Corneille. But it is just here that the novelty appears. Rostand entrusts to the physical opportunities of the stage what the dramatists just mentioned and others of our own day convey by its literary possibilities: he uses neither the soliloquies of Shakespeare nor the monologues and stances of Corneille, reIving, instead, either upon stage properties and scenery or else upon what might be called illustrative action.

However, in Cyrano de Bergerac, which preceded l'Aiglon, attempting less, Rostand has been more successful. Cyrano, its hero, being a man of action, Rostand has portrayed his feelings in action. His arm and cane waving above the crowd and his double exploit in composing a ballade while at the same time fighting a duel are in Do wav necessarily connected with the plot. They are expressions of mood and, though less extreme in form, they too, like the incidents of l'Aiglon just mentioned, are examples of Rostand's peculiar way of portraying the emotional. He has exteriorized, made visual, a state of feelings.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• Rostand
• Cyrano-de-Bergerac
• Derek-Jacobi
• John-Carlisle
• Pete-Postlethwaite
• Sinéad-Cusack
• John-Bowe
• play
• theatre
• theater

[QueenBoadicea]

I've always liked the role of Le Bret. He functions as the best friend, the one who's not afraid to tell Cyrano the truth or to pull him up short when he goes too far. He even points out those things that Cyrano misses, like when that woman offered him food and her eyes didn't shrink from his. They omit those words in this version but I've always been impressed by them. They embody the very core of the part.

[dillonfreed]

easy to see why ayn rand loved this