Cyrano
Edmond Rostand, Adapted by Jeffrey Lo & Max Tachis
Los Altos Stage Company
From its premiere night in 1897 Paris when the audience was still applauding an hour after the final curtain fell, through multiple stagings on the Great White Way starring some of Broadway’s finest, and after hundreds of productions worldwide in multiple languages, Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac to this day remains a wildly popular and much beloved play based loosely on the life of the title character who in fact famously sported in the early 17th century a large nose and a swift sword. To the long list of both rhymed and blank verse translated adaptations of the original work in French now comes a new, gender-bending version by Jeffrey Lo and Max Tachis staged with a number of character changes and updates to give an old tale still set in 1640 France a modern-day feel. Humor and heart continue to reign in this story of a strange but deeply loyal love triangle, but the some of the twists and turns inserted sometimes pull this Cyrano in directions that are a bit plot puzzling and pace slowing.
For the rest of my review, please proceed to Talkin’Broadway.
Rating: 4 E
Cyrano continues through May 4, 2025, in a two-hour, thirty-minute production (with intermission) by Los Altos Stage Company, 97 Hillview Avenue, Los Altos, CA. Tickets are available online at https://losaltosstage.org/; in person Thursday and Friday, 3 – 6 p.m. at the theatre’s box office; or by phone at 650-941-0551.
Photo by Evelyn Huynh
C’m on. A female Cyrano just like a female Julius Caeser is nothing more than an ego trip for the director who wants to be innovative.