Cyrano needs surgery

It must be the most famous nose in theatrical history, a cruelly-elongated organ attached to the hopelessly love-struck hero of Cyrano de Bergerac and its length surely helps cut his life short.

As worn by Stephen Rea, in Howard Davies's sumptuously boring production of Edmond Rostand's gorgeous, late 19th-century romantic melodrama of longing and languishing, this nose resembles a pantomime accessory rather than a wretched disfigurement.

Sadly Rea's nasal attachment proves to be a mere blemish on a production that would need radical theatrical surgery to restore Cyrano's de Bergerac's emotional pulling power. The director has succeeded in wringing the play almost dry of the hopeless passion Cyrano feels for his cousin, Roxane.

Davies's production does away with the illusion of realism, with Rostand's fantasy of 17th-century Paris, its high civilities and hectic low life, its battlefield trenches and autumnal convent.

His decision to dispense with the flashy swash-buckling of drab Cyrano productions could have been fresh and invigorating. But the production has all the finesse of a bulldozer.

William Dudley's hideous design, a huge, revolving metallic climbing frame on stage, with two gangways in the stalls, proves a trundling distraction when it assumes the unconvincing form of a fortress or Roxane's balcony.

If the idea is to be austerely theatrical the idea fails. For what with the ridiculously dancing cadets at rapier practice, the frequent musical accompaniment, the Ulsteraccented troop of soldiers and the cluster of nuns, this Cyrano has something of the air of a 20th-century Broadway musical.

The trio of actors caught in the play's never fully completed love triangle left me low, deprived and wanting. Where they should be smitten, pained and sexually desperate they act cool and calm as if waiting to be collected by someone else.

Rea's Irish, self-sacrificing Cyrano supplies the tongue-tied, verbally inept Christian with love letters that secure him Roxane's love. In a scene of supposedly shattering irony he assumes Christian's identity and deluges the girl on the balcony with a cascade of seductive words.

But Rea's heart, let alone any other of his vital organs, seems unaffected. He throws away Rostand's love-lines as if they were used tissues.