Who’s the man we always back?
Cyrano de Bergerac.

Who can take the fucking flak?
Cyrano de Bergerac.

Who is it that twats attack?
Cyrano de Bergerac.

Cyrano de Bergerac is known all over the place as a brilliant warrior who can take on an army of ferocious soldiers single-handedly. By defying the Parisian grandees and publicly defending civil liberties, he has almost achieved celebrity status as a proud rebel. He is also notorious for his virtuoso verse-smithing. He seems to be able to twist the pen even more skilfully than the sword. He can penetrate with his words to the greatest depths of the subtle feminine soul which he understands better than many a seventeenth-century lover. But Cyrano de Bergerac has a very big nose. It is his nose, like some huge and insurmountable barrier, that hinders his way to true love. He is desperately in love with the beauty Roxanne, but he simply never confides in her. What could end as a beautiful Renaissance romance turns into one of the greatest tragic love stories in the history of world literature.

Contemporary English playwright Martin Crimp has rewritten one of the classics of French literature. Using rhymed lines that play with elements of rap and spoken word poetry, he has redefined the rules of the rhymed language in drama. He has juxtaposed elevated language and the profane, and thus unleashed a conflict between the protagonists. They compete to find out who can rhyme better and more adeptly. In Parisian high circles, you are only worth something if you can coin a line extremely well. Using these meta-theatrical procedures, Martin Crimp manages to stab lightly at the socio-political circumstances of the French Renaissance, which he wittily parallels with the twenty-first century, using laconic observations. His linguistic masterpiece gradually coalesces around the question of beauty and beauty ideals while various humorous peripeteia unfold. It explores the shame and anger felt by our fellow humans because our appearance does not match the unattainable social norms. In a time of rampant narcissism, Crimp therefore asks how to live a genuinely fulfilled life.

Tin Grabnar