Cyrano on PBS

Cafe Society
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Anyone see it? I’m surprised there wasn’t a thread already.

Then again, maybe it’s just as well no one seems to have seen it. It was, IMHO, crap.

I’m a lifelong fan of the play. I’ve seen several stage productions and the three major film versions (including Steve Martin’s Roxanne). I’ve read several translations and the original French. I participated in a seminar on it back in December.

Now, I’m willing to grant that maybe part of the problem with this version was that it was a taping of a stage production, and things that work on stage may not work on TV. But that can’t explain all, or even most, of the problems of this production.

First, the good things.

Kevin Kline.

That’s it. In contrast to all the other performers, who seemed to be acting for an audience that was about two miles away, Kline’s performance was (relatively) subtle and nuanced. He didn’t shout his lines.

But with the exception of Chris Sarandon as de Guiche, most of the rest of the cast was pretty awful. Jennifer Garner, who does not qualify in my book as a ravishing beauty, didn’t look the part, and had no sensitivity for the role. She was also directed to make huge gestures and dance around the stage with every line in a way that was distracting and inappropriate.

The actor playing Christian, who always has a hard time not being overshadowed by Cyrano and Roxanne, didn’t succeed. I barely remember anything about his performance.

Perhaps the biggest problem, however, was that the director played almost the entire show as comedy. It’s as though he didn’t trust the audience to be able to handle a mixture of funny, poignantly romantic, and sad that is Cyrano, so he just went for the laughs every time. Remarkably, horrifically, even in the death scene!

The stagecraft was not particularly inspired or even interesting.

In short, it was about the worst performance of Cyrano I’ve ever seen. I’m disappointed.

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I stopped watching in the middle of the third act. I didn’t want to watch the man from the moon sequence, nor the battle scenes. I would like to have seen the ending (although from your description I’m glad I didn’t) but it didn’t seem worth it.

You’re right about that woman, she was awful. Kline was ok, and delivered some parts quite well. But he seems to me to lack the necessary swagger, and to be too soft-spoken. I thought his nose makeup was quite well done. Christian was, as you suggest, a cipher (and I don’t know what accent that was, but I kept thinking “Puerto Rico”).

My biggest objection was that they were using the Anthony Burgess translation. I am enamored of the Hooker translation, and see no reason to use Burgess. I especially hate his using the word “panache” for the white plume. That white plume is a symbol for all the heroism of his character, while “panache” just sounds like flamboyant style. Just not the same thing at all, especially for the last line.

Although it was a flawed movie, I still like Jose Ferrer’s version the best.
Roddy

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I’m so glad I missed it, since it’s my favorite play. I was familiar with the Burgess translation prior to the Hooker . . . hence the source of my User Name (Perhaps I should change it to “White Plume”).

Yes, I’ll stick with Jose Ferrer . . . or the musical with Christopher Plummer.

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I also liked the movie with Depardieu. But I’d like to see somebody make an accurate biographical picture about the real Cyrano, who was a remarkable man.

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ITA with the comments on Jennifer Garner. I kept hoping she’d tone it down a bit. Kevin Kline was amazing, though.

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The Derek Jacobi version (which I believe was a stage version that was filmed) was pretty good- it used the Burgess, I believe, but like the Depardieu film it reinserted Roxanne arriving on the battlefield.

For laughable versions, I present the Derek Mahon translation. Stephen Rea, him of the Crying Game, as Cyrano. Not only was everything played for laughs (red clown wig) , it managed to involve Irish politics. Universally awful. Was placed in a position where I had to tell Mr Rea this.

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I was abl eto watch about fifteen minutes before switching over to “America’s Funniest Home Injuries” or something like that. The ‘stagey’ acting didn’t bother me as much as the sound quality. If they are going to film a threatrical production they MUST do more than put a microphone in third row center.

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I forgot to mention another thing that really bothered me: the black actor playing Cyrano’s friend, Le Bret. He yelled and jumped and pranced around the stage with every line in a manner that I found quite inappropriate and distracting. It was obviously the director’s doing, but it was just another brick in a wall of awful.

For the seminar I mentioned, I read several translations (but not the Burgess) and the original French side by side, then watched the Ferrer and Depardieu films. The Hooker translation is magnificent, and I think is the way I really see the play, but while watching the French film and reading the original text, I got a sense for how much was lost in any non-rhyming translation.

I don’t own a copy of the Burgess (yet), but I think it is good that there is an English rhyming version. Although I’m not very familiar with Burgess (and I don’t know what the Broadway/PBS production changed or cut) it struck me as a faithful adaptation, considering the constraints that rhyming must impose on the translator.

Actually, I think I do know one thing this production changed. At least I hope that Burgess was more faithful to Rostand than to add the exchange between Roxanne and Christian at the end of his futile attempt to speak for himself in Act 3. It was several lines in which he asks why it’s so important that he be able to express himself with words, and she give some long winded (and, it seemed to me at the time, politically correct) answer. I was stunned by this unfamiliar passage, and ran to my copies of the text to see if it was something I had forgotten. But it’s not in the original or the Hooker. So I assume the director added it, which IMHO is a major theatrical crime. Cutting material for time or comprehension’s sake is understandable, but adding your words to the text is rarely, if ever, acceptable.

You do know that “panache” literally means “plume” in French, right? I agree that “panache” in English does not fully encompass all of Cyrano’s traits. In the context of the play, it stands for his refusal to compromise his principles more than fancy clothes, which he disdains. But I think that in an English version of Cyrano, “panache” is still the best choice, because it connotes a manner of behavior, whereas the symbolism of “my white plume” (mentioned only once earlier in the play, IIRC) is rather more obscure to the casual viewer. (In fact, I seem to recall a question in the User Comments section of IMDb asking what “my white plume” is supposed to mean.)

BTW, here’s an interesting article by the Washington Post’s Jonathan Yardley on the Hooker translation.

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Regarding Hooker vs. Burgess, I just find Hooker more enjoyable to listen to, I’m not sure why.

As for using “panache” vs. “white plume” I think this is very important:

First there is the discussion in the war scene about how de Guiche abandoned his white symbol of rank in battle in order to escape, and what that said about his character. So the idea of a white symbol not being abandoned for the sake of convenience is important to the deeper meaning of the play.

Second, although the literal translation for “panache” is “plume”, at least for American speakers of English, “panache” has come to refer strictly to matters of style, indicating perhaps swaggering confidence. Now, of course Cyrano has swaggering confidence, but he has so much more! He has extraordinary courage, integrity and generosity. The white plume is the symbol he has consciously adopted for not only his confidence but also for his integrity; it then becomes that symbol for us, the audience.

So at the end when he says he has something that will sweep the stars away (sorry I don’t have my copy in front of me) when he faces God, it doesn’t even make sense in English to say “my panache”. But it does make sense to say “my white plume”. It retains the original meaning in French that his qualities of character will shine in Heaven much more than those who are rich and successful but who got there by a lack of good character. It’s not his swaggering confidence that will shine in Heaven, but his integrity.

I think I would be able to say this better if I could quote the actual line (from Hooker, of course) but I hope you get my meaning. “Panache” as a word in English has just changed its meaning too much from the original French, so that it doesn’t carry the necessary meaning.

[\dead horse beating]
Roddy