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“Cyrano de Bergerac”
Ballet NdB (Národní divadlo Brno)
National Theatre Brno
Brno, Czech Republic
October 27, 2024

by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2024 by Ilona Landgraf

Ten years ago, I watched one of Jiří Bubeníček’s early ballets—The Picture of Dorian Gray—which he created and danced with his twin brother, Otto. Since then, the Bubeníčeks regularly cooperated on many productions, with Jiří usually contributing the choreography and Otto the design. Their latest ballet, Cyrano de Bergerac for the Ballet of the National Theatre Brno in the Czech Republic, is also a product of family cooperation, especially given that Jiří’s wife and longstanding artistic collaborator, Nadina Cojocaru, joined the team as costume designer.

Cyrano de Bergerac is based on the eponymous 1897 romantic-comedy verse drama by the French dramatist Edmond Rostand (1868-1918). Rostand modeled the hero after Hector-Savinien de Cyrano (1619-1655), nicknamed Cyrano de Bergerac. A fabulously heroic swordsman, he served in various regiments before quitting the cadet’s life and dedicating himself exclusively to writing prose and love poetry. The prominent nose that affected the love life of his literary representative also graced the real de Cyrano, though it was more moderately sized.
Bubeníček’s Cyrano de Bergerac (Shoma Ogasawara) has a huge nose indeed. But it is false, and its size is blown out of proportion by self-doubts and mockery. Worn with grudging determination, the nose hinders neither his spunky swordplay nor his impudence when defending his ideals. But it made him feel ugly and therefore prevented him from avowing his love for his beautiful, young cousin Roxane (Anna Yeh). However, once he was sure that she requited his passion, the false nose was gone, and Cyrano was unabashedly himself. Brimming over with self-confidence and bliss, he was stopped by nothing—not even an assault by a horde of brawlers that Roxane’s admirer, Count de Guiche (Ilia Mironov), sicced on him. One stroke each and the nasty lot was done.
But, alas!—it was all a misunderstanding. Roxane had fallen not for Cyrano but for the handsome Christian (João Gomes), which poured icy water on Cyrano’s hopes. An intellectual woman, Roxane expected to be courted. His lack of poetic talent put Christian in a quandary. Devastated but utterly in love, Cyrano offered to ghostwrite the love letters for Roxane and thereby acquired a secret outlet for his passion. The ravishing correspondence that ensued was facilitated by Roxane’s smart duenna (Adéla Kulíšek). Though Cyrano’s soul squirmed as he witnessed the blossoming romance and hasty marriage of Roxane and Christian, his support was unwavering. Cyrano became the actual source of love and Christian merely its channel.

The Franco-Spanish war was raging when Christian finally decided to bust the bogus but he was fatally wounded on the battlefield just before clearing things up. Fifteen years later, Roxane had retreated into a convent outside Paris where Cyrano regularly visited her. On his last visit, he asked Roxane for Christian’s farewell letter. Mortally wounded, he read the opening sentence “Roxane, I’m gonna die…” then the letter slipped from his fingers. As Cyrano recited the remaining lines by heart, Roxane realized that he had been the author of Christian’s letters all along and that she had actually loved him. Shortly before his death, both finally became a couple.
The audience would have left heartbroken if the protagonists hadn’t assembled for a chummy epilogue. When bidding each other “Ciao!” all sadness evaporated. Cyrano was the last to leave. He put on the false nose again but this time strode off with his head held high.

Bubeníček’s choreography was stunningly complex, and, at the break, the storytelling already felt so rich that I couldn’t believe that Act I had lasted only one hour. Blessed with a knack for conveying character traits and emotions through movement, Bubeníček’s narrative grip was inescapable. His at times quick paced choreography appeared spontaneously in reaction to the goings-on. The resulting intensity was breathtaking but softened by Baroque music by Bach, Lully, Scarlatti, and Handel, among others (played live by the Orchestra of the National Theatre Brno under the baton of Jakub Klecker), which spread calm and a sense of order and serenity. It made what happened on stage seem like the unwinding of an inevitable fate.

The clever set design enabled smooth transitions between the scenes. Low-hanging candlestick chandeliers in front of a purple curtain gave the place where Cyrano put on his false nose an ecclesiastical atmosphere. The facial blemish weighed on him, but he walked resolutely to attend a performance of the play La Clorise in the theater of the Hôtel de Bourgogne. It began when the purple curtain and the chandeliers rose. A backdrop of huge, painted putti against a blue, cotton-wool clouded sky promised a kitschy performance. Indeed, the pathos of the leading character (who, given his costume, was some sort of sun god), played by the actor Montfleury (Vojtěch Blahuta, an actor of NdB) was hard to bear. The same was the case for Cyrano who rushed on stage, retched ostentatiously, and forced Montfleury off stage.
Blahuta and a singer (Romana Kružíková) joined the dancers on several occasions and in various roles. Reciting passages from Rostand’s verses, they padded the narrative thread but, in the case of Kružíková, also acted as a tool of fate. The shot that killed Christian was fired by her (a black beak mask marked her as a bird of death).
A simple table and chair decorated the room where Cyrano confided his love for Roxane to his buddy Le Bret (Arthur Abram). The setting reminded me of Romeo when swooning over Juliet to Mercutio only that Cyrano’s rapture was much more unbridled than Romeo’s (Ogasawara’s body seemed to melt into the table as if he were butter and the table, synonymous for Roxane’s body, a warm brioche).
What Cyrano hoped was a date with Roxane took place at the patisserie of Ragueneau (Hugo Martinez García), where a cheerful bunch of bakers proclaimed “dolce vita” while handling piles of fresh bread. The wide swinging of their arms seemed inspired by the whipping of huge amounts of buttercream. The only one who had no fun was Ragueneau’s wife, Lisa (Rashmi Torres).
A balmy breeze stirred the curtains in front of Roxane’s balcony where her rendezvous with Christian took place. A winking reference to Romeo and Juliet’s balcony tête-à-tête, Christian (unlike Cranko’s Romeo, for example) didn’t attempt a pull-up to climb onto Roxane’s balcony but instead hefted her up. Besides, the tryst was a love triangle as Christian stood on Cyrano’s shoulders to reach Roxane for a kiss.
Stripped down to its skeleton, the arcade facade of Roxane’s neighborhood later enclosed the camp of the French Gascon cadets and was part of the convent walls that shielded Roxane from the outer world.

In Ogasawara’s Cyrano, a bold, expert fighter merged with a skilled poet whose heart brimmed with emotions. In her youth, Yeh’s Roxane was eager to soak up life with all her senses, and being widowed didn’t harden her. Rather, the way she opened her arms signaled that she still embraced life. Since she was surrounded by feisty convent nuns, singing the blues was out of the question anyway.
Compared to Cyrano, Christian was a pale character, though he dared to mock Cyrano for his nose. Initially a stiff beau, Count de Guiche wasn’t shy to use evil practices to win Roxane’s heart. But she, being skilled in soft-soaping him, circumvented his advances. Years later and with a mature personality, he had the decency and courage to ask Roxane for reconciliation. As a mail carrier, Kulíšek’s duenna resembled a nimble letter pigeon who loved to tease the recipient (Juliet’s nurse is usually less agile). The friar (Manuel Romero de Haro), who secretly married Roxane and Christian, was a Capuchin, while in Romeo and Juliet, he’s a Franciscan. But that’s insignificant—neither brought the lovers any luck.