MAYER WAKEFIELD is entertained but let down by an audacious production that, sadly, doesn't ring true
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Cyrano de Bergerac, The Playhouse London
Star vehicle with James McAvoy at the helm destined for box-office bonanza
CHARISMATIC: James McAvoy
[Marc Brenner]
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JAMES McAVOY teams up once again with director Jamie Lloyd for another star vehicle in Edmond Rostand’s universally loved story about Cyrano de Bergerac, the man who is brilliant with language and the imagination but, in the real world, disfigured by a monstrous nose.
Cyrano loves Roxane to distraction but he is forced to watch her fall for traditional good-looker, Christian. While she is thrilled by poetry and romantic expression and craves exquisite love letters, Christian is useless with words and out of his depth.
So Cyrano steps in and writes a barrage of letters, purportedly from Christian, but actually issuing from the depths of his own crazed passion. Which one does Roxane truly love — the good-looker or the man who shares his heart and soul with her through language? It's a universal predicament.
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