'Cyrano' Has a Nose for Human Nature

Kevin Kline Anchors Broadway Revival With Understated, Heart-Touching Power

NEW YORK -- It can happen during a sermon, a political speech or even a performance: You walk in a skeptic. You come out a believer.

The catalyst of the unexpected epiphany in this case is a theatrical one: the unlikely pair of stars in Broadway's tender, downy-soft new "Cyrano de Bergerac," Kevin Kline and Jennifer Garner.

Kline, we were sure, could hold it together on a stage. Garner, not so much. Known for her TV dramas ("Alias"), action movies ("Elektra") and husband (Ben Affleck), she seemed a sales-driven and potentially plastic choice for the role of a 17th-century Gallic damsel who falls wrongly and rightly for a man with a sword in his scabbard and a rhyme on his lips.

Well, vive la fleur-de-lis and whistle "La Marseillaise"! Garner is a poised, vivacious and plucky Roxane -- just the sort of woman to whom a lovesick poet might scribble quatrains. Playing off Kline's warmly embraceable idea of Cyrano as a hero of leonine forbearance, Garner adds her own grace notes -- as well as finely tuned antennae for comedy.

If a measure of relief seasons a theatergoer's appreciation of Garner, there is nothing but pure admiration for Kline, whose autumnal air is the dominant spirit of this appealing revival, which opened last night at the Richard Rodgers Theatre.

As with his subdued Falstaff in Jack O'Brien's Tony-winning "Henry IV" at Lincoln Center, Kline's Cyrano is an original spin on a character known to inspire actors to purplish excess. Kline's film r¿sum¿ records work both blissfully slapstick (his Oscar-winning turn in "A Fish Called Wanda") and painfully mannered ("Sophie's Choice"). On a stage, the Juilliard-educated Kline occasionally exhibits a surprising tendency to all but dematerialize in serious roles, as evidenced by his blank Trigorin in a star-studded Central Park "Seagull" several years back.

Cyrano, though, proves to be just the part for an actor who can pare away theatricality, rather than one who needs to add it -- as he does that prosthetic nose. From the famous opening scene of Edmond Rostand's sentimental melodrama, in which a foolish aristocrat makes the mistake of impugning Cyrano's looks, Kline's portrayal has us believe that Cyrano has heard it all before, that he has metabolized the pain -- and thus the boring litany of insults tossed at him is now merely an excuse for the effortless dispatch of an adversary.

It is only Roxane who can flummox him. The shock it gives this Cyrano, when Roxane confides to him that the man she loves is not he, but the shallower Christian (Daniel Sunjata), is registered by Kline as a controlled implosion, almost imperceptible -- yet somehow profound.

The gentle emotional waves generated by Kline inform much of director David Leveaux's production, mostly in good ways but also in a few that sap some of the energy from Rostand's ebullience. (Anthony Burgess's witty adaptation is one of the pluses.) The sequences involving the Gascony Cadets, the high-living brigade for which Cyrano fights, lack some dimension of exuberance, especially the scene that finds Cyrano and Christian on the ragged front lines of the war with Spain.

Sometimes, too, the performance styles don't entirely align. Sunjata, who excelled on Broadway as the arrogant gay ballplayer at the center of Richard Greenberg's "Take Me Out," gives off a more contemporary vibe than some of his cast mates, although the portrayal deepens as Christian comes ever closer to heroic sacrifice. In the play's trademark balcony scene, in which Christian recites Cyrano's words to Roxane, Sunjata's jejune bearing does work for the character. And though Chris Sarandon's conceited de Guiche makes for a formidable foil for Cyrano, Max Baker's frenzied Ragueneau needs to take a pill and lie down.

Visually, this "Cyrano" is all aglow, and not simply because of the candles that give gratifying luminescence to set designer Tom Pye's renderings of taverns and monasteries. The deft lighting by Don Holder mimics the radiance of Rembrandt, and the period garments by Gregory Gale reinforce the lush tones of this costume drama.

Garner conveys intelligence and naturalness on the stage, qualities to be prized in an actress accustomed to the intimacy of the lens. She gets right Roxane's own heroic myopia, in her amusing burst upon the cadets in the battle scene. She runs into difficulty only in the play's final movement, when she's not able either vocally or physically to communicate the toll that loss and sorrow have taken on a maturer, reclusive Roxane.

Kline comes to the rescue, injecting enough wisdom here for both of them. Cyrano's vanity is not banished completely in this portrayal. Rather, it seems tempered by experience and suffering. It's a humility that feels to the rest of us like the most meaningful kind of panache.

Cyrano de Bergerac, by Edmond Rostand, translated and adapted by Anthony Burgess. Directed by David Leveaux. Sound, David Van Tieghem; hair and wigs, Tom Watson. With John Douglas Thompson, Euan Morton, Concetta Tomei. About 2 hours 40 minutes. Through Dec. 23 at Richard Rodgers Theatre, 226 W. 46th St., New York. Call 212-307-4100 or visit http://www.ticketmaster.com.