The joy of Virginia Gay’s irreverent version of the Edmond Rostand favourite is in its chatty air and easy way with the audience. With the actors hanging out in the auditorium, Clare Watson’s production has begun before we have even sat down. When it properly starts, they have to tell us about it, repeatedly, in a series of meta-theatrical gags between a three-strong chorus (Tessa Wong, David Tarkenter and Tanvi Virmani) who are all neediness and no-name parts.
As a playwright, Gay claims this version as her own, although she sticks to the original fairly faithfully at first. Certainly, the conceit is the same: the bright, witty and pretty Roxanne (Jessica Whitehurst) falls for the brawny but inarticulate Christian, now known as Yan (Brandon Grace), failing to appreciate the ugly-duckling charm of Cyrano (Gay) who gamely feeds Yan with the love poetry he needs.
The twist is in the gender swap. Nobody says it out loud, but there is a sense this Cyrano has been overlooked not just for her famously long nose but also her sexuality. Roxanne treats her as a confidante, while Yan seems to take her as a man. She is doubly excluded, but also doubly sensitive to Roxanne’s needs as a woman and doubly aware of the clunkiness of Yan’s macho chat-up lines. She really does deserve to get her girl.
Gay shears the script of most of its military references and slims it down to half its usual running time. With busy festival schedules that is a good thing, even if it leads to a more sketchy account of the story, one that tempers its comic highs and emotional lows. As Cyrano, Gay has a funny conversational charisma, giving deadpan retorts under her breath, although she denies herself the full lexicon of colourful putdowns for which the character is renowned.
Perhaps that is because she has something else in mind. Diverting us from Rostand’s bittersweet tragic ending, she opts instead for some same-sex wish-fulfilment (not to mention a bit of unexpected action in the chorus), a conclusion that loses in dramatic tension what it gains in feelgood romance.
At the Traverse, Edinburgh, until 25 August
