CYRANO

James McAvoy is without the famed false nose usually worn by actors in Cyrano de Bergerac. But according to critics, he doesn’t need any extra help.

Director Jamie Lloyd can seemingly do no wrong, as he adds another success story to his directorial roster. The first in a three-play season at the Playhouse Theatre, Martin Crimp’s adaptation of Rostand’s classic tale has been given a rap-infused update.

The Standard’s five star review called McAvoy’s performance “stunningly powerful” and praised the production’s ability to “engage the imagination, the mind and the heart”.

Here’s what the rest had to say:

The Times, Clive Davis ★★★★★

“There is nothing fey or decorative. Yet the language, for all its profanity, has a genuinely poetic quality. In place of the traditional alexandrines Crimp gives us sinuous hip-hop verse that is grandiloquent and swaggering when it needs to be, but is also witty and, yes, tender…McAvoy dominates from start to finish, even when his voice drops to the faintest of whispers. His intensity is frightening.”

The Telegraph, Dominic Cavendish ★★★★★​

“This is McAvoy’s fourth project with Lloyd, and it’s his best. With sparkling eyes to match scintillating outpourings, he doesn’t waste a syllable: by turns pugnacious and tender, he wears a mask of insouciance yet bursts with feeling and gnawing pain... I defy anyone not to fall in love with it.”

WhatsOnStage, Sarah Crompton ★★★★★

“The power of Crimp's translation – funny, fluid, punchy, romantic – is that it makes you hear Cyrano's dazzling charisma while simultaneously helping you understand that this play is not a simple love story but a rousing defence of words themselves, their power to change things, their role in a society's freedom.”

The Guardian, Michael Billington ★★★★

“At its best, this re-reading of Rostand works beautifully...This is a Cyrano that dispenses with conventional spectacle, colourful costumes and visual flummery. Given that Rostand set out out in 1897 to provide an antidote to naturalistic drama this may seem perverse. But Lloyd’s production makes you see an old play with fresh eyes.”

The Stage, Natasha Tripney ★★★★

“Yes there are times when Lloyd’s production feels like it’s striving too hard to generate a hip, post-Hamilton vibe, but it tempers this with a sense of humour...and a genuine sense of poignancy, while also featuring a majestic central performance from the charismatic McAvoy.”

Independent, Paul Taylor ★★★★

“McAvoy is very good at conveying the awful vertigo of Cyrano’s reluctant but self-merciless masochism. He woos Roxane (an eagerly intelligent Anita-Joy Uwajeh) through the ardent romantic speeches that he ghost-writes for the man she thinks she fancies.”