Theater Review: A Dull Cyrano Musical with Peter Dinklage

Cyrano

Written and Directed by Erica Schmidt

Lyrics by Matt Berninger

Music by Aaron and Bryce Dessner

Starring Peter Dinklage and Jasmine Cephas Jones

The New Group

Daryl Roth Theater, Manhattan

November 2, 2019

Cyrano de Bergerac, Edmond Rostand’s 1897 play about the guy with a heart of gold and a too-big nose, has timeless popularity, and has been reframed as a musical or opera several times. This is logical, given its heart-on-sleeve romanticism and timeless theme of frustrated love. The plot of the beauty (the lovely Roxanne) who initially falls for a handsome hunk but later realizes that the physically challenged, but devoted and brilliant Cyrano is the real catch, appeals to the emotions of a broad public. So it’s not surprising that the New Group has devoted all of its fall schedule, in a larger-than-normal theater, to this new musical treatment of the story, featuring Game of Thrones’ Peter Dinklage, and adapted and directed by his wife Erica Schmidt. It initially debuted to mixed reviews in Chester Connecticut (the prototype try-out city) in summer of 2018, and now is off-Broadway, with the hope of a Broadway migration if it is a hit. It fits into the New Group’s rather regrettable tendency in the past few seasons to feature vanity projects by film or stage icons, including actors trying to write (Jesse Eisenberg, Wallace Shawn, Hamish Linklater) and film/TV actors trying to make it onstage (Zosia Mamet, Chloe Sevigny), with very mixed results. While this treatment of the Cyrano story was interesting in intent (with Mr. Dinklage’s self-identified dwarfism substituting for Cyrano’s big nose as his source of insecurity), its dreary derivative music never allowed the romanticism to take flight.

This musical stays pretty close to the play’s text. Mr. Dinklage is better at the heroism-braggadocio scenes (as in the opening, when he disrupts a bad dramatic production) than in his intimate scenes later in the play. His singing voice has some gravelly character, but veers off pitch, and it is wearying to have his bass voice paired in duets with a soprano, sometimes in unison  two octaves apart. This is less a flaw in Mr. Dinklage than with the composers, who wrote a score that I would expect from a high school or college production. Melody was popsy and uninspired, and the constant tinkling, minimalist-style accompaniment lacked variety. The music was not exactly bad, just meh—I mostly thought about other things when people sang, not ideal for a musical or opera, where musical numbers should heighten the emotion. This emotional amplification is certainly possible for me in pops-style musicals—see Dear Evan Hanson for an example. But not here. The big problem with this musical mediocrity is that the plot of Cyrano is now a bit melodramatic and overly familiar, so it’s hard to rely on just the acting and plot to carry things along. We all know how this play turns out (tragically), so the getting there is the key to making this work, much like a familiar Shakespeare play. When the music fails, there is little chance for things to succeed.

The Roxanne of Jasmine Cephas Jones was perhaps the most effective combined acting-singing performance—I believed in her emotional switch from the pretty boy to Cyrano, and her voice was attractive and secure. Glee’s Blake Jenner was perfectly cast as the pretty boy who catches Roxanne’s initial interest. He is strikingly good looking and has a nice tenor voice to contrast to Mr. Dinklage’s raspy bass. He somehow becomes more pallid-acting and -appearing as the play goes on, paralleling Roxanne’s waning interest in him. Sets and lighting were unmemorable and did little to convey the ambiance of 1600s Paris. Chalk this up to another New Group failed effort to make a splash with a popular actor and draw a new audience to the theater, and as yet another New Group failed musical after last season’s pointless Clueless. Perhaps this Cyrano will become a smash on-Broadway hit—but if so, I won’t be there to re-see it.