Award-winning production of Cyrano de Bergerac swashbuckles into BAM April 5 to May 22 (photo by Marc Brenner)
Who: Jamie Lloyd Company
What: US premiere of award-winning production of Edmond Rostand play
Where: Harvey Theater at the BAM Strong, 651 Fulton St.
When: April 5 – May 22, $45-$310
Why: It’s not always clear why an old classic suddenly becomes sizzling hot; this time around, it’s Edmond Rostand’s 1897 favorite, Cyrano de Bergerac, about a relatively unattractive soldier in love with a beautiful woman who falls for a not-too-bright handsome gent who gets his poetic, romantic words from Cyrano. In 2012, the Roundabout staged a version at the American Airlines Theatre on Broadway directed by Jamie Lloyd and starring Douglas Hodge as the title character. In Theresa Rebeck’s 2018 Bernhardt/Hamlet, at the same theater, Rostand is a minor character who is rewriting Hamlet for Sarah Bernhardt but turns his attentions instead to Cyrano. Franco-British actor, writer, and director Alexis Michalik made Cyrano, My Love, in 2018, following his stage version of Edmond in 2016. In 2019, the New Group presented a musical version at the Daryl Roth Theatre starring Peter Dinklage as Cyrano, adapted and directed by his wife, Erica Schmidt, that was turned into a 2021 film directed by Joe Wright. Also in 2021, Andrey Cheggi Chegodaev performed My Cyrano, a melding of Cyrano de Bergerac and Tanya Lebedinskaya’s poem “My Cyrano,” at the Center at West Park.
Now the Dorset-born Lloyd, whose other acclaimed works include Betrayal, Macbeth, Three Days of Rain, Passion, and Evita, comes to BAM for the first time for the US premiere of his Olivier-winning production of Cyrano de Bergerac. This new adaptation by Martin Crimp stars Scottish actor James McAvoy (The Ruling Class, The Last King of Scotland) in the role previously performed by Ralph Richardson, Derek Jacobi, Richard Chamberlain, Christopher Plummer, Gérard Depardieu, Steve Martin, and Kevin Kline, among others over the last century-plus. Eben Figueiredo is Christian, with Michele Austin as Ragueneau, Adam Best as Le Bret, Sam Black as Armand, Tom Edden as De Guiche, Adrian Der Gregorian as Montfleury, and Evelyn Miller as Roxane. The set and costumes are by Soutra Gilmour, with lighting by Jon Clark and music and sound by Ben and Max Ringham. The 170-minute show, which won the Olivier Award for Best Revival (in addition to four other nominations), runs April 5 through May 22.