Review: CYRANO at Exodus Ensemble

Despite their existence in Santa Fe for several years (and glowing reviews from many theatremakers I highly respect), I had, until Friday night’s performance of Cyrano, not made it out to see an Exodus Ensemble show. Partially it was just timing – as a theatremaker and theatre educator, I don’t often lately find myself with a free evening to spend at another company’s show – and partially it was the limited number of tickets available (though I’d made my way onto the waitlist for several previous productions on those occasional instances I did have some free time, I had never before actually managed to snag a ticket, as fewer than 20 are available for any given performance – and to be fair, it must be said outright that all Exodus production tickets are by donation; there is no set price, which is a very admirable model). However, I am very pleased to say that now that I have seen an Exodus Ensemble production, their work does live up to the hype and it is very much worth it to put in the effort to catch one of their shows.

Full disclosure – Cyrano de Bergerac is in fact one of my all time favorite plays. I’ve seen and appreciated many of the recent adaptations, including catching the Erica Schmidt Cyrano in its off Broadway iteration starring Peter Dinklage and Jasmine Cephas Jones, but am also all too aware that it can be tricky to get the play right through a contemporary lens. 

In a nutshell, the original play deals with Cyrano de Bergerac (based on a real life 17th century duelist and playwright of the same name), a brilliant, scathing, complex, romantic man whose love for the beautiful and intellectual Roxane is seemingly unreciprocated. Enter the handsome but uncultured Christian, with whom Roxane is immediately enamoured, and Cyrano and Christian conspire to woo Roxane via Cyrano posing as Christian in writing and, in one instance, verbally under cover of night. The play is sweeping and beautiful but admittedly rather complicated when critically approached via contemporary perspectives on issues such as, of course, consent, and the tragic ending of the play has been an element that has not always stuck the landing in modern adaptations – in my opinion, because the choice is made to ground what is a very epic and fantastic moment in realism that ultimately undercuts the power of the story.

I am pleased to report that the Exodus Ensemble adaptation, however, very smartly manages to avoid a lot of the potential pitfalls of adapting the original text for a modern setting; it is absolutely a loose adaptation, where characters share names and some characteristics with those in the original Rostand piece, but many plot points and details are sidestepped in favor of exploring different themes and, in some ways, actually shining a light on problematic elements of the original work. 

In this iteration, the play is set partially modern day at a high school reunion (there is a high level of audience interaction throughout the show, with the conceit being that those of us in attendance as audience members were also students at this school; audience members should also be prepared to move around the space quite a bit, as almost the entire CCA is [very well] utilized within the production), but mostly depicts the events of a few fateful weeks in 2010 while the students attending the present day reunion were about to graduate high school – as someone who graduated high school around that time, I may have been pretty much the exact target audience. Cyrano, or Cy (a strong and emotive Mason Azbill) has recently broken up with the beautiful Roxy (the always dynamic and engaging Kya Brickhouse), and though his initial relationship with new student Christian (a riveting and nuanced turn by Patrick Agada, highly effective as both teen and adult versions of Christian) is that of an onlooker as his friend Brett (John Winscher, masterfully handling perhaps the widest ranging depictions, performing both as a high school party boy and an adult school administrator) bullies Christian, they eventually become close and Cyrano seeks to help him woo Roxy. 

Though the broad strokes on paper are certainly similar to the original play, this production very much creates something entirely new specifically by digging into the nature of the relationship between Christian and Cyrano, as well as not shying away from some of the more troubling elements around Roxane, or Roxy, being misled by the two men (it is also effective to depict the deception as the inebriated action of teenaged boys, rather than something premeditated by two adults who really should know better; particularly, with Christian being depicted as a shy and socially awkward kid, Cyrano’s involvement makes a lot more sense). Exodus’s version also provides Roxy with a much needed female friend in the form of overachieving student Raj (charmingly depicted by Tiff Abreu), though I do wish that the character of Roxy had been given a bit more depth within this adaptation (this is not a criticism of Brickhouse's performance). 

I did initially find myself seeking parallels between the two plays, but that really isn’t the point and folks who are not familiar with the original text will still find this Cyrano very accessible. The nods and homages to the original are absolutely appreciated, but the piece here is not meant to be, and should not be approached with the expectation of being, a 1:1 adaptation; indeed, without giving too much away, the strategic shifts in storytelling crucially actually help maintain the emotional impact of the end of the play; I commented to another audience member after the fact that I felt that even the people who know the Rostand play were able to access the ending in a similar way to what his audiences might have over a century ago because as this adaptation did not strictly follow the original text, the ending was set up in a way that was not overly predictable. It was a insightful and moving choice, strongly supported by the emotional depth of Agada’s performance (and a very smart and unexpected use of one of those songs that will never fail but to make an impact with people of my age group).

Exodus Ensemble’s Cyrano is not entirely perfect – as they utilize what from my understanding is more of a collaboratively devised approach (a strategy that I do appreciate and that was impressively done, but sometimes benefits from input from an outside eye), a bit more refining might have been helpful as there are some sequences that run perhaps a bit long and other moments that I wish had been expanded and explored more fully – but any issues I had were very minor and Cyrano is damn good theatre performed by an incredibly talented group of actors (shoutouts also to Bel Kiely, who takes on multiple roles in the production, as well as Gregory J Fields and Zoe McDonald, who supported both the top of show and the near seamless transitions of moving the audience throughout the space). 

Though it can be a bit more of an effort to obtain a ticket in comparison to other local theatres with larger house sizes, Santa Fe audiences should absolutely make an effort to get on the mailing list so they have a shot at seeing some high quality, seriously creative work by deeply dextrous artists, whether Cyrano or another Exodus production.