Maria Giere Marquis Photo by Evelyn Huynh

Everyone even vaguely familiar with any written, staged or filmed version of Rostand's Cyrano carries one image in mind of the title character: a large nose that becomes the brunt of jokes, puns, and pranks–some made with much pride and self-deprecation by Cyrano himself and others leading to Cyrano drawing a sword to prove his widely held reputation as a deadly dueler. Gone in this Lo/Tachis adaptation is any reference to the presence of a bubble-blossoming mound on Cyrano's face; and gone is much of the resulting, over-the-top hilarity that tends to spill forth, often with vaudeville-like banter and buffoonery.

The reason this Cyrano is reluctant to reveal his deep-felt love for Roxane–his closest friend from childhood–is not related to his looks, but because Cyrano is a she; and there is an unsaid implication that such same-sex love in seventeenth-century Paris is not to be spoken aloud by Cyrano to her Roxane. The switch leads to humorous situations and remarks in the adapted script and certainly to a different perspective that is intriguing; however, the script and director (also Max Tachis) must often rely on other means for seeking the laughs that other Cyranos have received.

One of the innovations of this script that works the best is the inclusion of a four-person Ensemble that acts much like a Greek Chorus, making snarky, snippy, or just plain hilarious comments on the side and switching roles multiple times as rowdy theatre audience, gossiping townspeople, war-weary soldiers, googly-eyed admirers of Roxane, and even rapping bakers using French buns as microphones. Lines are often delivered one or two words at a time as a spoken line shifts in split-second perfection from one to the next person. Multiple vocal ranges, styles and tones are employed as personalities shift along wide ranges. Jonathan Amores, Chayenne Greenberg, Patrick Rivera, and Zachary Vaughn-Munck becoming a starring role in this Cyrano–one eliciting many of the evening's biggest laughs and one helping pick up the pace and the energy level that at other times seems a bit slow and low-key. (Vaughn-Munck is especially a hoot as Emile, a clownish announcer/town crier loyal to the corrupt Count who is quite willing to spout forth "fake news" to bolster the Count's inflated ego.)

Maria Giere Marquis brings spunk and spark, brass and bravado to the title role as a woman in pants whose reputation as a fearless fighter of entire regiments of seemingly stronger men becomes fodder for an Ensemble to stumble over themselves in expounding and exaggerating her feats. One of the best moments of occurs when she irritates the pompous fop, Count de Guiche (Emery Mulligan), to the point that he challenges her to a duel. As she fights him without a sword in hand, she dodges his flimsy thrusts while reciting first an insulting limerick, then a smearing sonnet, and finally a six-verse villanelle–all created on the spot before she overpowers him with not only words, but now with sword in hand.

When Cyrano's loyal friend with a penchant for bad booze and writing damning articles against the Count, Ligniere (a gender-bending Brittany Mignano), introduces her to a meek but strikingly handsome cadet named Christian (Jonathan Covey), Cyrano soon learns that here is her rival for Roxane's affections. At first, as Roxane is trying to tell her best friend Cyrano about someone who has captured her love, Cyrano's eyes sparkle and her heart seems ready to burst out of her chest in hope it is her. When she hears it is the handsome but tongue-tied cadet she has just met, she is crest-fallen and near uncharacteristically speechless.

Soon afterward, when Roxane asks Cyrano to encourage the shy boy to write about the love she sees in his eyes, the disappointed but ever-devoted Cyrano cannot refuse her. That pledge sets up a deluge of letters coming from her own heart but sent in the name of a cadet who can barely muster a stumbling phrase of "I love you" to win the heart of a Roxane, who craves not just beauty but also wit in a man. The words and tones of delivery that Cyrano creates and often delivers like a background puppetmaster for a lip-syncing Christian outside Roxanne's window would make Shakespeare proud. As the ruse continues to work and solidify the love between the other two, Cyrano continues relying on words to be her solace and her silent way of being the loyal, true lover whom Roxane really adores but does not realize.

As Roxane, Vivienne Truong is elegant in manner and word and always sincerely gracious in gratitude to Cyrano. But at the mention or sight of Christian, her Roxanne flutters and flits and waxes in similes and metaphors as she act like a teenager bursting with anticipation of her first kiss from the person she believes is truly the love of her life.

As the story builds toward the climactic turning point of a bloody battlefield, both the original playwright and the these adapters populate the scenes with other characters who often add spurts of levity. Jeremy Ryan is first a bumbling and hysterical disaster of an actor, Montfleury, whom Cyrano hates because of his massacre of Shakespeare ("What light through yonder breaks my window"). Later, he is a wannabe poet chef, Ragueneau, whom Cyrano helps become a proud poet of culinary versed recipes. His cream puffs and silly lines are enough to win the heart of Roxane's protective companion, Diana, played with eyes of suspicion and distaste by Lisa Burton Guevara whenever Cyrano approaches Roxane but with eyes full of desire when around Ragueneau.

The adapters have curiously included a new, rather central character in the form of Countess de Guiche, played with determination and often grit by Gabriella Goldstein. First a mirror of her silly, puffed up, and arrogant husband, the Count, the Countess undergoes the most dramatic of character developments of this adaptation, bringing surprises of motive, courage, and love interests that once again add gender-bending turns and spins to the original tale. Do they work? Do they make the tale more interesting? Maybe yes, maybe no, but in either case, the Goldstein's performance is one to be applauded.

Christopher Fitzer's scenic design along with Max Tachis' directorial choices making use of the scenic elements lead to some of the more captivating moments. Three sheer but dark curtains that cross the stepped-up stage on different levels become quick ways of shifting scenes, locations and moods as well as adding elements of heightened drama and laugh-out-loud humor. When Cyrano tries her best to delay an in-person tryst between Roxane and Christian that she knows is doomed to fail, her unsuccessful efforts are rib-tickling through a series of curtain-cluttered chases.

Carol Fischer makes wonderful use of the layered curtains as well as the layered stage levels in a lighting design that uses changing, bordered colors to shift moods and announce actions, and emphasizes through lit projections the importance of words when it comes to a story about true love.

I am not sure why I kept feeling that this Cyrano at times drags a bit. Certainly there is much going on, and the addition of the Ensemble, the Countess, and the gender-bending aspects are interest-raising . Maybe, overall, the "sans-nose" aspect removes too many of the usual puns and jokes expected from a tale about Cyrano. I also think some of the rhymed and blank-verse poetic lyricism usually found in adaptations fail to come through as much as I expected, due to some combination of adapters' and directorial choices as well as actors' deliveries.

Having said that, there is much to revel and enjoy in this gender-bending update of the original 1897 play. Los Altos Stage Company audiences will find many reasons to laugh and an ending that will draw a heartfelt tear or two in Jeffrey Lo and Max Tachis' newly adapted Cyrano.

Cyrano runs through May 4, 2025, at Los Altos Stage Company, 97 Hillview Avenue, Los Altos CA. For tickets and information, please visit losaltosstage.org or the box office Thursday and Friday, 3 – 6 p.m., or call 650-941-0551.