Cyrano De Bergerac, Mary Moody Northern Theatre at St. Edward's, February 12 -22

Director Michelle Polgar orchestrates a fine, vigorous production of the wonderfully romantic French drama Cyrano de Bergerac, playing through this coming weekend at St Ed's Mary Moody Northern Theatre. Edmond Rostand modeled the lonely, pugnacious cavalier with the big nose on the historical figure of Hector Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac, a duelist and dramatist who did, in fact, fight in the Thirty Years' War between the French and the Spanish.

One of my French professors dismissed Rostand's play as clap-trap sentimentality, to my great dismay. My father, a reticent man, had given me a copy of the Modern Libary edition when I was about 15, and in my own lonely hours I had soared with the eloquence of Cyrano, mused at his contempt for death and admired his casual heroism. I suffered with him the colossal irony of his unwanted obligation to support and protect cadet Christian, that young fop who had attracted the admiration of Cyrano's secret belovéd, his own cousin Roxanne.

Anyway, those pompous profs in the French Department were wrapped up in existentialism, Camus and Sartre, those lurching intellectuals at the bleakest extremes of literature and philosophy.

Ah, to live greatly, like Cyrano! He speaks and lives so fully, steadfast to his muse and his friends, defending them selflessly with a flash of the rapier and a swift scribble of the pen. Rostand's play was a great success in Paris in 1897 and his version of Cyrano has been alive with us ever since. José Ferrer won an Oscar as best actor for his 1950 film portayal of Cyrano and the great, inevitable Gérard Depardieu was a memorable Cyrano in his 1990 film (subtitles furnished by Anthony Burgess, translator/adapter of the verse script used in St. Ed's production).

The play's four acts take us to a public theatre, to the pastry shop of the baker Rageneau, to the barracks of the cadets of Gascony, to their hungry existence in the fortress besieged by the Spanish troops, and finally, years later, to a quiet convent garden where the aged Cyrano regularly calls to bring widowed Roxanne his mocking comments about news from court.

Polgar's staging of the opening act uses the theatre's in-the-square configuration to great advantage. As spectators, we in the audience embody the public in that fictional theatre, ranged around the hollow square, awaiting the appearance of the tragedian Montfleury while observing the idle and the aristocratic who are milling about just in front of us. A narrow stage occupies one corner of the square playing space; perched high above us, diagonally across the open area, are the elegant Roxanne, her chaperone and an oily-looking pair of aristocratic suitors. At times the crowd of actors may block sightlines, especially for those spectators in the front rows, but Polgar subtly clears the space for Cyrano's first appearance, his elegantly derisive replies to the challenge of a presumptuous young nobleman, and the fast-moving, fatal duel that follows.

David M. Long is a vivid, quick-witted Cyrano. His friend Le Bret (Greg Holt) frets about Cyrano's delight in insulting the powerful, but Long is airily dismissive of poverty and pains. He quickly wins our sympathy, just as he has won the fascinated loyalty of the corps of cadets.

Roxanne (Julia Trinidad) is the focus of all sentiment in this piece. She is enchanted by the sight of the aristocratic young Christian de Neuvillette, whom she has eyed from afar at the theatre, and Christian responds with silent fascination. Cyrano is deeply enamoured of Roxanne but convinced that she could never love someone with as disfigured a nose as his own. The Count De Guiche (Marc Pouhé), self-assured nephew of Cardinal de Richelieu, schemes to put Roxanne into a marriage of convenience so that he can take her as his mistress. Julia Trinidad must play this as an ingenue throughout. She begs Cyrano to protect Christian as he joins Cyrano's regiment; tongue-tied Christian begs Cyrano to lend his eloquence to woo Roxanne.

Long as Cyrano (left) and Christopher Smith as Christian (right) craft their relationship well. On his first day with the cadets, Christian tosses Cyranoesque gibes at the older man and the cadets are confounded to see that for once, Cyrano does not simply skewer an insulter. Banishing the others, Cyrano dutifully tells Christian of Roxanne's hopes. The mentor-protegé relationship between them is clever, touching and credible. They're particularly comic as doppelgänger suitors, a pair of Romeos falling all over one another in the dark of the garden below Roxanne's window.

So our hero woos and wins Roxanne, but only by proxy. He helps foil the wicked De Guiche. Marc Pouhé as De Guiche is so smooth and well-mannered that we have some trouble imagining him as really evil; he's closer in attitude to Peter Pan's Captain Hook.

The pace is snappy throughout, at times too quick -- for example, in the sequence of Cyrano's witty replies to the lame insult, "Sir, your nose is -- rather large!" Cyrano tells his adversary, "You could have done much better!" and extemporizes a dozen or more -- announcing a style of insult and then delivering a hilarious example. Each is more comic than the preceding, and when the cadence is captured, the full scene builds, to be capped off by Cyrano's extempore sonnet during the duel.

And then there's Cyrano's melancholy, which Long captures fully only in the sublime final scene. For me the divine spark of poetry lights a darkness of disappointment in this man, bravely covered by his jests and commotion. Cyrano at the Mary Moody Northern Theatre is epic and captivating, a hero never daunted. Rarely in this version does he pause to acknowledge or contemplate his disappointment. If we were to glimpse that tragic sense at moments during the play, his final face-off with Death would be even more moving for us.

Elizabeth Cobbe's enthusiastic review for the Austin Chronicle, February 19

The Three Sisters, Chekhov, Mary Moody Northern Theatre, November 13 - 23

St Edward’s Mary Moody Northern Theatre with its current production of The Three Sisters of Chekhov has again realized a fine synergy by adding two professional actors to an admirable cast of undergraduates.

The quality and success of university productions in the Austin area is almost depressing – so much talent and energy! This is a great boon for those of us who take the time to explore it, but it seems strange to have all that star power flaring hot out there and yet largely unrecognized.

The three Prozorov sisters and their brother Andrei reside in a distant Russian province but cherish memories of life in Moscow with their late father, a brigadier general. Their yearning for escape from the stifling provinces is much discussed, and a common interpretation of the play is that the entire movement is the effort to get to Moscow, a half-imagined magic circle of sophistication and light.

This lyric production is anchored by Marc Pouhé as a talkative middle-aged lieutenant colonel, saddled with an unbalanced termagant wife but wistfully in love with the only married sister, Masha, and by Ev Lunning, Jr., as the 60ish bibulous military doctor Chebutykin, regretful, ill-educated and gone to seed but deeply attached to the Prozorovs.

Cribbing from my own recent comments about the Nina Variations: “Chekhov’s plays always give us a large cast of characters. Family members, friends, local officials, servants and others spend much of their time in desultory talk with and about one another. The trivial mixes with the transcendent. There is a slow overall movement through his plays, but just as in real life, the present moment is the most important. And the present moment is often filled with longing, with banter, with philosophizing, with small absurdities.”

Or, better, quoting the author himself as cited by Robert Brustein, “Let the things that happen onstage be just as complex and yet just as simple as they are in life. For instance, people are having a meal at table, just having a meal, but at the same time their happiness is being created, or their lives are being smashed up."

Act I of The Three Sisters gives us the celebration for the youngest sister, Irina, on her saint’s day, much of which takes place about a central table. Lt. Col. Vershinin (Pouhé) makes his first call; the vulgar local girl Natasha attends as well and captures the attention of the brother, Andrei. Act II, 18 months later, shows us Natasha, now married to Andrei, inexorably extending her influence over the household, as the same group of military officers young and old gathers to socialize and to court the sisters; Natasha puts an end to the evening by prohibiting the scheduled visit of Mardi Gras musicians.

Act III, two years further along, is set late during a summer night as all are dealing with the aftermath of a catastrophic fire in the village. And Act IV, that autumn, gives us the definitive reassignment of the artillery brigade, Irina’s decision to marry, and an offstage quarrel and duel.

Throughout the play the vulgar Natasha extends her influence and expropriates the sisters; the sisters seek work, affection and pleasure that is never completed; and Dr. Chebutykin hums, grumbles, resumes his drinking, and mutters again and again, “It’s all one. . . .” Moscow and the dream of escape fade into impossibility.

In the midst of disaster, in the closing lines Olga tries to reassure her sisters: ”Oh, dear sisters, our life is not over yet. We shall live! The music is so gay, so joyous, it seems as if just a little more and we shall know why we live, why we suffer. . . If only we knew, if only we knew!”

Sounds like a downer, doesn’t it? But no, it isn’t at all – Chekhov draws each of the characters vividly and director Sheila Gordon keeps her actors bouncing off one another, taking the greatest possible advantage of the remarkable, large “theatre in a square” that is the Mary Moody Northern Theatre. At one point the dinner party at stage center goes into silent, animated slow motion as the thoughtful and sincere first lieutenant Baron Tuzenbach (Nathan Osburn) relentlessly courts Irina, who keeps backing away from him.

The pace of the first two acts is intense and in fact almost too fast – for example, as Irina, Steffanie Ngo-Hatchie is charming and expressive but moves and speaks with the accelerated metabolism of a bird trying to escape from a cage. Act II and the first half of the production conclude with an unscripted, choreographed house invasion by the Mardi Gras musicians, who swirl around Irina and sweep her away.

It would not be fair to pick favorites, since this is such an ensemble piece and each character and actor achieves at least one intensely memorable scene. Guest artists Pouhé and Lunning are sympathetic and give fully realized portraits of decent men in impossible situations. Masha (Dorothy Ann Bond), the unhappily married sister who falls for Lt. Col. Vershinin, is sharp tongued, trapped and eloquent. Her brief, intense farewell to him shows both hearts breaking.

Olga (Julia Trinidad), who gives way to the inevitability of becoming a school teacher, has to listen to her brother’s rambling confession and complaints late at night after the fire in Act III. Her silent reaction to him, sitting stock still, speaks a world of emotion and meaning, far more than his blathering.

The eccentric, snarky Captain Solyony (Nathan Brockett) is in turns generous, offensive, pitiable, and threatening. . . . Et j’en passe, as the French say – there’s too much for me to recount. This Three Sisters is a memorable evening, one with characters and actors who will stay with you.

Hannah Kenah's strongly positive review in the Austin Chronicle, November 19

Leila Bela's review on Austinist.com