See it if not to be dramatic but this was the best play I saw in 2022.
Don't see it if you can't follow along with a classic story. Read more
See it if You love poetry and a good love story. The talent in cast is amazing
Don't see it if You don't like plays
See it if you love Words like Cyrano, you swoon over James McAvoy, you appreciate the rhythm & intensity of an incredibly well-crafted show
Don't see it if No set, No costumes (jeans & leather jackets), dizzying rhyming verse, and a trek to Bklyn are not your speed. Read more
See it if You enjoy beat box. The performers are fabulous especially McAvoy. T revised text is clever.
Don't see it if Have difficulty following fast spoken word. This is not the classic Cyrano. The text is contemporary with contemoprary references
See it if you are a fan of the original play and want to experience it with modern language (done right) or are looking to see some masterful acting.
Don't see it if you have a hard time understanding accents or hate abrupt pacing changes — scenes go from slow and methodical to quick and witty in a snap. Read more
See it if you like a modern original take on a classic, generating a memorable evening of theater that is a pure fun love letter to words and poetry.
Don't see it if you expect a traditional production and large spectacle,or if you'd rather avoid demanding,articulate theater that asks for your imagination Read more
See it if Brilliant reimagining of Rostand in English. McAvoy gives the performance of a lifetime. Everything old seems new again.
Don't see it if No prosthetic noses. No balcony scenes. No real swords .A Roxanne with brains & beauty. Not the Cyrano ala Jose Ferrer. Read more
See it if you want to see a modern, fast-paced, inventive take on a classic play; stunning performances from McAvoy and the entire cast
Don't see it if you find it challenging to understand or follow complex, fast-paced spoken word; you expect extravagant sets and staging Read more
"This is not your grand-mère’s 'Cyrano.' Replacing Rostand’s stately 12-syllable alexandrines with jumpier rhythms, its euphemisms with plain speech and its perfect rhymes with ones so slant they serve as italics, Crimp rockets the action to a world drunk on language as it’s actually spoken. It’s also a world in which, as the baker Ragueneau (now a poet, too) predicts, 'There’s going to be a new force of words.'"
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"Yup, you heard it. New York’s hottest ticket is a middle-aged white man rapping. That man is James McAvoy: booted and buzzcut like a Glaswegian squaddie and stripped to the waist. For nearly three hours he spits fire, spraying lyrical pearls at his enemies, nailing rap battles and chucking his battered heart beneath the feet of the woman he loves, Roxane."
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"Lloyd's 'Cyrano' lives comfortably in anachronism. Classics purists will still find the rhyming-couplet poetry of Rostand’s play intact, but Martin Crimp's freewheeling adaptation will also delight the Gen-Z crowd: 19th-century verse gives way to 21st-century spoken-word poetry and rap, including plenty of red-hot roasts. Think Hamilton, but faster (yes, it’s possible) and with no accompaniment but a single beatboxer (Vaneeka Dadhria)."
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"The Jamie Lloyd Company’s production was the pride of London in 2019. Lloyd is, for good and ill, a stylist, fond of precise stage choreography that fixes his actors into hieroglyphic friezes: When the 'curtain' (a plywood wall) flies up, the glowering company stands there, posed as if for a school picture — if every student wanted to kill you."
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"McAvoy's entire performance (done in his native Glaswegian dialect) has that quality: you want him to want you. That it's entirely in keeping with the text is a testament to both his mastery as an actor and Lloyd's as a director, and this brilliant mixture of celebrity star power, sex appeal, command of language, and just damn good acting will make you fall in love with the power of words all over again."
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It's a strange collection of debits and credits and how you might react to it is anyone's guess. If you love the original in all its florid glory, this determinedly caustic approach and frankly ugly design may prove fatally off-putting… If you wish to see a Belle Époque drama viewed through a 21st lens, revealing a poisonous sexual politics, this is the attraction for you. To my mind, Lloyd wrestles the play to a draw; his ideas are interesting, his results inconclusive.
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"It’s not only the physical production that’s stripped down. Lloyd stages many of the scenes with the actors facing front—almost concert-style—with military-precision blocking. It’s low-key and unfussy, and puts the spotlight squarely on the verse. (The very free, and very accessible, adaptation of Rostand’s text is by playwright Martin Crimp.) In case you were confused about the star of the show, just read the phrase on the back wall: 'I love words, that’s all.'"
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Playwright Martin Crimp, an adherent of the ”in-yer-face” school of British playwriting, has taken Edmond Rostand’s turn-of-the-last century verse drama, Cyrano de Bergerac, and not only blown off the cobwebs but exploded it into an entirely new 21st century experience. Staged by innovative director Jamie Lloyd, it has become a showcase for titanic Scottish stage and screen actor James McAvoy making an unforgettable New York stage debut in the title role as the 17th century poet and soldier.
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