Though I missed these Sir Ralph performances (as I was busy being born between them) Richardson’s biographer Garry O’Connor notes that his interpretation of Falstaff was unique, using “the sensuality…the roguery and trickery” as “metaphors for an inner vision” of “childish idealism” and a “heartfelt romanticism” akin to Don Quixote. Since in Rostand’s play, Cyrano approves of being compared to Quixote, Richardson probably embodied a link between these characters, who as it happened appeared simultaneously on North Coast stages last weekend.
I’ve come to expect themes of idealism and virtue in the plays the North Coast Prep students select, but I knew Cyrano as mostly a romantic figure from the movies and a musical stage version (which I saw in its pre-Broadway Boston run, after a highly liquid lunch with its writer and lyricist, the novelist Anthony Burgess).
The original Cyrano de Bergerac stage play presented in absorbing fashion by the younger members of the Young Actors Guild dramatized more substantive heroism than I recalled, such as Roxanne’s daring visit to the soldiers on the front.
Genay Pilarowski (alternating with Rosemary O’Leary) as Roxanne and Caleb McIlraith (alternating with Julian Eubanks) as Cyrano, fully inhabited their roles. Gerald Beck’s multi-level set made cunning use of the Gist theatre, and Jean Bazemore’s usual discerning direction was aided by friends who stepped in when she was temporarily hospitalized during rehearsals: Michelle Francesconi, Michael Fields and Donald Forrest.
And with Cyrano’s dying words, the idealism was flamboyantly apparent: “But who fights ever hoping for success? I fought for lost cause, and for fruitless quest!…I know you now, old enemies of mine! Falsehood!..and Compromise! Prejudice! Treachery!…Folly—you? I know that you will lay me low at last!…Yet I fall fighting, fighting still!”
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