August 04, 2004 - 8:20 a.m.
33 isn't so bad. Last night I took the boys up to the Town Green for the Neighborhood Watch Awareness party and ice cream giveaway. And I wore those straight-leg jeans that have been in the bottom of my drawer for 5 years. I had forgotten that there was a hole in the knee, but who cares! They fit!
For my birthday, Mike took me to the closing night of Cyrano de Bergerac at the Shakespeare Theatre. I don't think blueduke has yet written on the subject of "Why all Cyranos are great." Perhaps I ought to tackle that one later today. This one was fantastic. Twice, yes, twice, the audience was so devoted to their attention of the play that there was complete and total silence in the theater. Not a single chair squeaked. No one so much as coughed. Wyn Davies's Cyrano was brilliant. He was likable, witty, less pompous than other Cyranos, and obviously having the time of his life in the role. Actually, the entire cast seemed to be having a very good time, which always makes for a good performance. Somewhere I read an opinion that Roxanne was a little wooden but I thought she did alright. The role of Roxanne isn't as easy as it seems. Rostand created her as intelligent, witty, and I think one translation calls her "bookish" but these qualities don't come through in most of the scenes. She's an object of desire for the plot and it isn't until she tricks de Guiche that Roxanne gets the chance to impact it. She's credited with the plan to smuggle food to Cyrano's company at Arras but, as the scene is played out, she's an object again. That can be difficult to play.
Mike went out in intermission to buy a copy of the translation for me to add to my collection of them. There were a couple very modern references (Coor's Light, for example) that I think they could have done without. And I hated hearing Roxanne use "you know" as punctuation. But it included some very lovely parts that weren't included in the blank verse, Hooker version.
Anyway - great play. And, since my mother and father drove up to watch the boys for the evening, Mike and I even got to go out for dinner and carry on a conversation never interrupted by anything but our waiter. Ah!
