Cyrano de Bergerac
Had fun on Friday hanging out briefly with lizard and columbushacker. Good to see you guys again!!
I LOVED the play that night. If you live in cbus, definitely get out to Schiller park and catch the Cyrano de Bergerac production. It's fantastic!! I was only mildly familiar with the play (as in, i knew it existed and that it was French) beforehand, but I loved it. The acting (particularly by the title character) was great, the costumes rather nice (except for the typical but always tragic brown pants-black boots combo), and the sets gorgeous. As noted in an earlier entry, I WAS distracted by the age of the female lead, but that was mostly because i couldn't determine if she was actually as old as I thought she was (she was).
A note on the play I found the end predictable but unsatisfying. I tried to explain my position here to yrmencyn and Roomie in the car, but i'm not sure I was very coherent, so ill try again.
Again, spoiler alert!! If you haven't read the play and plan on doing so, the following synopsis will utterly spoil you. Just fyi.
Essentially, Cyrano--who is dashing and charming and witty, a leader of men and excellent duelist who bears a very large nose which he believes (falsely) curses him to life of unforgivable ugliness bereft of love--spends most of the play helping the woman he loves, Roxanne, with her courtship of the handsome Christian. The two fall in love at first sight based on their looks, and Cyrano enables their trysting by providing all the words and wit for Christian, who is simply hapless at wooing women. Roxanne eventually comes to love 'Christian' for his wit and soul; for his part, Christian, realizing that Cyrano isn't just being friendly but loves Roxanne himself, wants to force Roxanne to choose between her handsome paramour and his witty friend. Before Cyrano can tell Roxanne the truth, Christian is killed during a battle, and Cyrano vows to never let Roxanne know that her beloved was not what he seemed. In the epilogue, 14 years later, Roxanne, still grieving Christian, realizes that Cyrano was her true lover, but the man who made many enemies through his slicing wit and daring swordsmanship dies a rather non-heroic death, denying his love and deception until death.
Wow. I mean, its a tremendous play, really. But there's a couple of things that bothered me about it, once I was done appreciating the play for all its brilliance.
First, it seems like every 'good' piece of fiction requires tragedy and death. I don't limit this just to plays, but also in terms of the movies that get recognized as 'good' (by oscar nominations or other means). In particular, if a 'good' piece of fiction is named after a character, you can be pretty sure that the character will die at some point along the way. Like Antigone and Hamlet.
I went into this play EXPECTING Cyrano to die, even though I knew nothing about the play. We all bring external expectations as an audience member, conditioned by many experiences with fiction. And I think the problem is that there is no real way to get around these expectations. If you go in expecting tragedy, and you get it in a way that feels true to the plot and characters (as this one does), then it works. If, however, you get a happy ending, then it feels trite and cheesy, like we won't cut our fiction any breaks or we have some kind of eternal pessimism that won't allow us to accept that things could actually end up happy.
I like to be surprised. One of my favorite romantic comedies is My Best Friend's Wedding, at least partially because (oops, another spoiler alert) the girl doesn't get the guy. Quick plot: Julia Roberts tries to break up the wedding of best friend Dylan McDermott and his fiance Cameron Diaz because she realizes that she's in love with him) Its predictable to some extent because the 'other' woman, Diaz, is from the moment we meet her presented as a sympathetic character deserving of respect. So we know that the story won't treat her too badly. But instead of foisting her off on some other worthy soul (as in Enchanted, for example, where (opps sorry, i'm really ruining movies left and right here) both James Marsden and...uh, the girl who was with Patrick Dempsey get nice consolation prizes in each other), she gets The Guy. And our 'heroine' ends up single (though still happy, we must note).
So the problem here, I think, is that my expectations get in the way of my being able to enjoy fiction for what it actually is. I appreciate things more when they surprise me, but do so in a way that isn't contrived. I don't want happy endings for their own sake (well, sometimes I do. I do read romance novels, after all, and I'd be PISSED if i didn't get my happy ending. And, uh, my porn). Romeo and Juliet (no spoiler alert, i mean COME ON) would probably have killed each other with all too real (though probably radically different) feelings after being married for a few years. Cause they would have escaped the tomb and lived in poverty with all their friends and families thinking thy were dead, and you KNOW that julet wasn't signing up for that kind of life, no matter how sweetly the nightingale was singing, if you know what I mean.
Eh. I think i'm rambling now. The point relating to the play is that I so wanted the happy ending for Cyrano and Roxanne, and yet if i had gotten it, I probably would have been unsatisfied because it wouldn't have felt true to the story. His death felt right. I suppose this is the essence of tragedy, right? Wishing it were different and yet knowing that this result was in some way inevitable? Maybe I'm just too difficult to please.
My second point is related to that lengthy first. I would have liked to just see what would have happened if Christian had survived and Roxanne had been forced to choose. I had a hard time getting a grip on Roxanne's character. She protests that she would love Christian even if he were ugly...but Christian is not ugly. I think the play turns on the fact that audience is convinced that she would indeed choose Cyrano despite his nose. One of the big points is that Cyrano views himself as much uglier than the rest of the world. But I would have liked to see the moment of realization for Roxanne and the choice and its consequences. I think it could have gone either way--I don't think she would have been happy in the long run with Christian, but she might have involuntarily had an expression of revulsion upon the realization of the deception which would have turned Cyrano away forever. I could have seen an ending, for example, where Roxanne intends to choose Cyrano, but he thinks she will reject him and he runs off and gets himself killed then and there. That would entail a different play, and a different choice regarding Roxanne's characterization than the one I saw on stage, but I find the possibility interesting.
Sorry about the lengthy discussion there. I just found the play so very powerful and needed to get all of that out. If anyone has read/seen it or has thoughts on any of the above i'd love to hear it, and i'm sorry if i'm not very coherent.
I LOVED the play that night. If you live in cbus, definitely get out to Schiller park and catch the Cyrano de Bergerac production. It's fantastic!! I was only mildly familiar with the play (as in, i knew it existed and that it was French) beforehand, but I loved it. The acting (particularly by the title character) was great, the costumes rather nice (except for the typical but always tragic brown pants-black boots combo), and the sets gorgeous. As noted in an earlier entry, I WAS distracted by the age of the female lead, but that was mostly because i couldn't determine if she was actually as old as I thought she was (she was).
A note on the play I found the end predictable but unsatisfying. I tried to explain my position here to yrmencyn and Roomie in the car, but i'm not sure I was very coherent, so ill try again.
Again, spoiler alert!! If you haven't read the play and plan on doing so, the following synopsis will utterly spoil you. Just fyi.
Essentially, Cyrano--who is dashing and charming and witty, a leader of men and excellent duelist who bears a very large nose which he believes (falsely) curses him to life of unforgivable ugliness bereft of love--spends most of the play helping the woman he loves, Roxanne, with her courtship of the handsome Christian. The two fall in love at first sight based on their looks, and Cyrano enables their trysting by providing all the words and wit for Christian, who is simply hapless at wooing women. Roxanne eventually comes to love 'Christian' for his wit and soul; for his part, Christian, realizing that Cyrano isn't just being friendly but loves Roxanne himself, wants to force Roxanne to choose between her handsome paramour and his witty friend. Before Cyrano can tell Roxanne the truth, Christian is killed during a battle, and Cyrano vows to never let Roxanne know that her beloved was not what he seemed. In the epilogue, 14 years later, Roxanne, still grieving Christian, realizes that Cyrano was her true lover, but the man who made many enemies through his slicing wit and daring swordsmanship dies a rather non-heroic death, denying his love and deception until death.
Wow. I mean, its a tremendous play, really. But there's a couple of things that bothered me about it, once I was done appreciating the play for all its brilliance.
First, it seems like every 'good' piece of fiction requires tragedy and death. I don't limit this just to plays, but also in terms of the movies that get recognized as 'good' (by oscar nominations or other means). In particular, if a 'good' piece of fiction is named after a character, you can be pretty sure that the character will die at some point along the way. Like Antigone and Hamlet.
I went into this play EXPECTING Cyrano to die, even though I knew nothing about the play. We all bring external expectations as an audience member, conditioned by many experiences with fiction. And I think the problem is that there is no real way to get around these expectations. If you go in expecting tragedy, and you get it in a way that feels true to the plot and characters (as this one does), then it works. If, however, you get a happy ending, then it feels trite and cheesy, like we won't cut our fiction any breaks or we have some kind of eternal pessimism that won't allow us to accept that things could actually end up happy.
I like to be surprised. One of my favorite romantic comedies is My Best Friend's Wedding, at least partially because (oops, another spoiler alert) the girl doesn't get the guy. Quick plot: Julia Roberts tries to break up the wedding of best friend Dylan McDermott and his fiance Cameron Diaz because she realizes that she's in love with him) Its predictable to some extent because the 'other' woman, Diaz, is from the moment we meet her presented as a sympathetic character deserving of respect. So we know that the story won't treat her too badly. But instead of foisting her off on some other worthy soul (as in Enchanted, for example, where (opps sorry, i'm really ruining movies left and right here) both James Marsden and...uh, the girl who was with Patrick Dempsey get nice consolation prizes in each other), she gets The Guy. And our 'heroine' ends up single (though still happy, we must note).
So the problem here, I think, is that my expectations get in the way of my being able to enjoy fiction for what it actually is. I appreciate things more when they surprise me, but do so in a way that isn't contrived. I don't want happy endings for their own sake (well, sometimes I do. I do read romance novels, after all, and I'd be PISSED if i didn't get my happy ending. And, uh, my porn). Romeo and Juliet (no spoiler alert, i mean COME ON) would probably have killed each other with all too real (though probably radically different) feelings after being married for a few years. Cause they would have escaped the tomb and lived in poverty with all their friends and families thinking thy were dead, and you KNOW that julet wasn't signing up for that kind of life, no matter how sweetly the nightingale was singing, if you know what I mean.
Eh. I think i'm rambling now. The point relating to the play is that I so wanted the happy ending for Cyrano and Roxanne, and yet if i had gotten it, I probably would have been unsatisfied because it wouldn't have felt true to the story. His death felt right. I suppose this is the essence of tragedy, right? Wishing it were different and yet knowing that this result was in some way inevitable? Maybe I'm just too difficult to please.
My second point is related to that lengthy first. I would have liked to just see what would have happened if Christian had survived and Roxanne had been forced to choose. I had a hard time getting a grip on Roxanne's character. She protests that she would love Christian even if he were ugly...but Christian is not ugly. I think the play turns on the fact that audience is convinced that she would indeed choose Cyrano despite his nose. One of the big points is that Cyrano views himself as much uglier than the rest of the world. But I would have liked to see the moment of realization for Roxanne and the choice and its consequences. I think it could have gone either way--I don't think she would have been happy in the long run with Christian, but she might have involuntarily had an expression of revulsion upon the realization of the deception which would have turned Cyrano away forever. I could have seen an ending, for example, where Roxanne intends to choose Cyrano, but he thinks she will reject him and he runs off and gets himself killed then and there. That would entail a different play, and a different choice regarding Roxanne's characterization than the one I saw on stage, but I find the possibility interesting.
Sorry about the lengthy discussion there. I just found the play so very powerful and needed to get all of that out. If anyone has read/seen it or has thoughts on any of the above i'd love to hear it, and i'm sorry if i'm not very coherent.