Playwright: Edmond Rostand. At: Chicago Shakespeare Theater at Navy Pier, 800 E. Grand Ave. Tickets: 312-595-5600; www.chicagoshakes.com; $48-$78 . Runs through: Nov. 10
Edmond Rostand's sword-and-cloak drama was already retro when it premiered in 1898, its predecessors by Dumas and Boucicault having already enjoyed their heyday in all but the most remote corners of our country's touring circuits, before being displaced by the domestic intimacy of Ibsen's realism. Rostand's Knight of the Protuberant Proboscis, however, hearkens back to Shakespearean ideals in his mastery of skills both physical and intellectual, while his tragedy lies in his willful rejection of the sensory emotions. ( The Renaissance Man's expected accomplishments, remember, included drinking wine. )
This has not stopped the sad saga of Cyrano de Bergerac from being copied in virtually every medium, short of having a candy bar named after him. You know the storythe one about the ugly brainiac soldier who courts the pretty girl on behalf of his muscle-headed buddy. You probably also know it from the translation by Brian Hooker, whose florid language continues to invoke ecstatic excesses in countless student productions, but Anthony Burgessyep, the Clockwork Orange authoris less interested in chest-heaving than he is in exploring the independent artist's ostracism by a stultifying conformist society. Penny Metropulos' direction affirms this theme, making for a cerebrally stimulating, but curiously bloodless, interpretation.
Such a bias can be refreshing: Roxane, for example, is not the familiar romantic-age airhead, but a "bookish" damsel whose quick wit enables her to gull adversaries in service of her allies, and whose penchant for pretty words reflects, not vanity, but a revulsion for vulgar animal appetites. On the other hand, Burgess' puritanism mandates a Cyrano so wholly absorbed in his own genius as to appear an unsuitable match for any wife not prepared to share his monastic lifestyle. Would the love of a good woman mellow him, or would his misanthropy ultimately sour her?
Unfortunately, we are past caring by the last 30 minutes of this three-hour presentation, which are almost wholly given over to protracted bouts of downstage-center sermonizing by our hero, as well as a singularly slow-paced opera-length death scene. ( Rostand wrote his play as a star vehicle, granted, but rarely has this factor ever been so obvious. ) Metropulos tries to alleviate the oncoming gloom by playing up the comic elements in the first act, but cannot prevent our initial enthusiasm giving way to fatigue sending us home as weary and enervated as the veterans of the Gascon regiment.