'Cyrano' review — Virginia Gay's gender-swapped retelling is full of warmth and joy

Read our review of Cyrano, adapted by and starring Virginia Gay, now in performances at the Park Theatre to 11 January 2025.

Panto season is in full swing in London, but another big-hearted show is treading the boards at the Park Theatre, offering joy and hope this festive period.

Virginia Gay’s modern, gender-swapped retelling of Cyrano de Bergerac (now titled simply Cyrano), which journeyed from Gay’s native Australia to this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe before arriving in London, significantly trims Edmond Rostand’s 1897 tragedy, removing extraneous characters, depressing plot, and more than one flowery speech. This is Cyrano-lite.

Gay plays the hopeless wordsmith Cyrano, passionately in love with the beautiful and intellectual Roxanne (Jessica Whitehurst). Yet Roxanne yearns for the strapping Yan (Joseph Evans, in his professional stage debut), who — without Cyrano’s help — is unable to string together the word play needed to impress Roxanne.

Gay’s awkward, angry, and intense Cyrano rests somewhere between stand-up and acting, frequently playing to the audience and failing to mask deep insecurities with self-deprecating humour. The play heavily implies that far more than Cyrano’s large and unattractive nose (as in the original) stands between her and winning Roxanne’s love. Instead, her gender and, therefore, her entire physical appearance, is the blocker. Gay’s adaptation plays with this beautifully, such as when she gestures to her nose and jokes: “My reputation precedes me by about six inches,” to which Roxanne replies: “There’s a lot to be said for a well-placed six inches.” There’s also a brilliant comic scene between Cyrano and Yan, as the latter asks to talk about Roxanne “man to man” and obliviously comments “women, eh?”.

Evans (the only new addition to the cast since the Edinburgh run) is endearing as the macho, simple Yan, flexing his rippling biceps, posing, and swaggering about the stage, blandly and repeatedly stating: “I’m new, I’m a soldier, and I’m interested in the world.” Whitehurst also impresses as the hot and horny Roxanne, who gets her titillation from poetry and writhes on a steel staircase (standing in for a balcony), as Cyrano (as Yan, twinning in white vests) waxes lyrical about love and desire.

Gay’s metatheatrical adaptation also wittily plays with form. She slips between her roles as actor in the play and writer of the show, as Roxanne proclaims, “I’m allowed to be shallow. I’m fully realised” and Cyrano/Gay replies, “I insisted you be.” She also introduces a chorus, simply named 1, 2, and 3, to comment on how her version departs from “the original”. This motley crew — a neckerchief-wearing older gentleman, cheerful chef, and blunt new girl — help to give shape to Gay’s slimmed down Cyrano, but their presence sometimes distracts from the central plot, such as during the showdown between Cyrano and Roxanne, when the latter realises she has been duped.

Gay offers a far happier conclusion than Rostand — one that brings it into the 21st century and allows Roxanne greater agency, though arguably she forgives a little too easily even in this version. But the message here is important: of opening your heart to love and listening to your true desires. It may sound sentimental, but blame it on the time of year.

Book Cyrano tickets on LondonTheatre.co.uk

Photo credit: Virginia Gay, Joseph Evans, and Jessica Whitehurst in Cyrano. (Photo by Craig Sugden)