Virginia Gay on bringing her gender-flipped 'Cyrano' to the London stage

Virginia Gay’s adaptation of Cyrano de Bergerac has travelled from Melbourne to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and, now, to London. She explains why her version is a happier affair than the original.

Virginia Gay had a few, largely similar reference points for Edmond Rostand’s celebrated 1897 play Cyrano de Bergerac before she began writing her own gender-flipped adaptation – the Christmas offering at London’s Park Theatre, running from 11 December–11 January. Most of these references included “men in ruffs with the big fake nose”.

Traditional productions of the French tragicomedy about a wordsmith who uses a handsome, inarticulate man as a conduit to woo the woman he’s in love with typically portray Cyrano’s large nose literally. Even Steve Martin’s 1987 film Roxanne, a rom-com retelling of the story which Gay grew up watching, saw Martin’s protagonist C. D. Bales sporting a fantastically elongated snout. Each version seemed to imply Cyrano’s looks were his barrier to finding romantic connection.

It was Audrey Wells’ 1996 film The Truth About Cats and Dogs – a looser, prosthetics-free go at the story, in which two women pool their best attributes and pretend to be one person in order to seduce a man – that first convinced Gay the story was really one of inner, debilitating low self-esteem.

But it was Jamie Lloyd’s revered 2019 West End version starring James McAvoy that really sold this interpretation to her. Gay was sceptical as she took her seat at the Playhouse Theatre. “I remember thinking ‘Good luck, mister handsome movie star.’ You’ve got to have such wells of hate to sell this story and you also have to be so verbally dexterous and physically agile.” Her reservations were swiftly overturned. “He was f--king exceptional, of course,” she recalls enthusiastically – while I nod in vehement agreement from the flipside of our Zoom.

The production made no attempts to tamper with McAvoy’s physical appearance, and this got Gay’s creative cogs whirring. “The transformational thing about it is when you take away the literal nature of the nose, all you see is somebody who has decided they are unworthy of being the central character in a love story, and that then becomes enormously accessible,” she says.

In Gay’s opinion, this experience is most common amongst women and members of the LGBTQ+ community. It’s “a story of queerness” and one “smart women tell themselves or get told a lot,” she reflects. “I got a scene-and-a-half in [to Lloyd’s production] and I thought, ‘I have to play this role.’”

Written during the Covid-19 lockdowns, Gay’s retelling is, in her own words, a “raucous romp filled with sex and jokes and hope,” one she hopes speaks to “young queer people” in particular, who may be experiencing similar insecurities to its titular character. In a playful preshow, which she likes to call “the flirt,” her female, queer Cyrano courts her audience, peacocking – winningly – as they take their seats, slipping them poetry and making sure they feel “loved, connected, and played with.” It gets them on her side and excuses her character’s later transgressions. Her interpretation is every bit as likeable and witty as McAvoy’s – and arguably more charming. The balcony scene she shares with Jessica Whitehurst’s Roxanne is raunchy and exhilarating.

Like Lloyd’s production, it’s stripped back and modern in its design, but it’s nowhere near as long – or as morbid. While Lloyd’s was almost three hours in length – and spared few characters a tragic ending – Gay was determined to make her trim, 90-minute take a happier affair. “I cannot, and I will not, be a part of any storytelling that says that queer love is impossible, or that you should kill your gays or bury your gays, or that it is somehow noble to exist without love,” she stresses. “I won’t do that and I don’t think that society wants to hear that story. I want to add to the joy and the hope and the possibility.”

Gay also ditches the play’s verse and makes the language contemporary, while still ensuring her Cyrano is a wizard of words. “I’m really adamant about theatre, especially old stories, having points of accessibility for everybody,” she explains. “It’s about finding poetry in the minutia of the modern world…while still having the richness of language.”

She’s added a small, self-aware chorus – who pipe up humorously, or petulantly, to question details of the narrative – and fleshed out the part of Roxanne. In traditional translations, “there’s a lot of talking about Roxanne, observing her from a distance,” yet Gay “would argue very strongly she is smarter than Cyrano.” Still, she insists her version is “filled with Easter eggs” for people who know the text back to front.

It was a hit at Edinburgh Festival Fringe last summer, directed by Clare Watson, and in Melbourne beforehand; both productions earned glowing reviews that broadly praised its feelgood lightness. But Gay believes subversive, uplifting retellings like hers serve a purpose beyond entertaining audiences. “How do we change what we ask of women and connection if we’re not changing the stories that we keep reiterating to ourselves, culturally and personally?” It’s in a bid to address this that she’s created a Cyrano so markedly joyous – a live, laugh, love affair, if you’ll excuse the hackneyed slogan. “For me, that’s the way you slip in the revolution,” she says, eyes twinkling. “You tickle them over to the right side of history, throwing them serotonin and endorphins and dopamine.”

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Photo credit: Virginia Gay in Cyrano. (Photos by Mihaela Bodlovic)