James DeVita, James Ridge embrace humane values of 'Cyrano' in American Players Theatre's production

James DeVita, 56, fell in love with Edmond Rostand’s “Cyrano de Bergerac” almost a half-century ago, when reading the “Classics Illustrated” comic-book version as an 8-year-old boy growing up in New York. 

“I never forgot it,” DeVita said during a conversation on the second day of rehearsal for the American Players Theatre production of “Cyrano” opening next month, with a cast of nearly 30.  Adapted and directed by DeVita, this “Cyrano” will be the first staging of Rostand’s wildly popular 1897 play since a 1997 production starring Lee Ernst and Deborah Staples. 

“I was just swept away by it,” DeVita recalled.  “To this day, I’m moved by the idea that one might live in the world with that much integrity.”

DeVita has tapped longtime friend and colleague James Ridge as Cyrano, a man convinced his monstrously long nose dooms any chance he has of winning the love of his beautiful cousin, Roxane (Laura Rook).  Never mind that he’s a scientist, philosopher and poet.  Smart, charming and brave.  A gifted swordsman and soldier.  A fervent idealist and man of principle.

“He’s all I hoped and thought I would be, even though as an adult I didn’t turn out like that,” DeVita said. “I was not as good a man as I’d thought I’d be.”

Interviewed separately, the 53-year-old Ridge chronicled a remarkably similar experience with Rostand’s play, when considered in relation to his own life’s journey. 

“As a young man, this show dented my soul, and it’s stuck there since like a thistle,” Ridge said. “I didn’t really understand at the time why it affected me so much.

“Now, having tried to live up to certain views of myself and having failed miserably, I find Cyrano’s commitment to a way of being in the world even more compelling.  I’m so much more aware, now, of my own faults and baggage. It makes me look at this thing he’s carried around his whole life – this thing that defines him – in a different way.”

Following one’s nose

As both DeVita and Ridge suggest, Cyrano’s nose is an emblem for whatever it is that makes each of us insecure about who we are – triggering those compensating public performances through which we try to present a better, less blemished self to the world. For most of us, those performances fail to overcome the demons dragging us down. 

DeVita wanted Ridge for the part precisely because Ridge won’t try to present a swashbuckling superhero; that’s not how he plays, as one of the best actors in Wisconsin. And for all Cyrano’s panache, that’s not the whole story regarding who he is.

“It’s just not helpful to me if I can’t think of Cyrano as human,” Ridge said. “He can’t fly through the air or bend iron with his hands. And the fact that he can’t – and that he sometimes fails or reveals glimpses of bitterness – makes all he accomplishes that much more inspiring.”

"Besides Jim’s acting ability – that’s a given – he has a particular depth of heart and soul,” DeVita said of Ridge.  “And that’s essential to playing Cyrano.  He can be wonderfully witty and flashy, but if you play him as perfect at everything and as doing no wrong, it’s too flashy.  Jim will make him a human being.”

“People think ‘Cyrano’ is ‘The Three Musketeers,’ ” DeVita said. “Nothing against ‘The Three Musketeers,’ which is great.  But ‘Cyrano’ is so much more than that and the swashbuckling. 

“We want the swashbuckling and the panache.  But we also need to understand that Cyrano has created this version of himself for a reason.  He has deep-seated anxieties and insecurities.  You can’t play that all of the time, but as an audience member you need to be aware of it.”

Eyes on Roxane

For Ridge, the key to making Cyrano real is remembering that everything he does – including the early fight in the theater, his ensuing battle with 100 men and the letters through which he impersonates the handsome but dimwitted Christian – is about his abiding love for Roxanne.

“Instead of living for some abstract ideal, or behaving in ways that are showy and self-aggrandizing, all of his actions are intimately connected with his dedication to a person,” Ridge said.  “It’s about the other, not the self.  And that’s what keeps it from being idealistic in a selfish way.  Those ideals are all in service of her, and she’s real.”

That’s what makes someone like Cyrano different from Richard III, evocatively embodied by Ridge in a DeVita-directed APT production in 2012. Both characters are brilliant and charismatic.  Both are gifted soldiers. Both nevertheless feel inadequate, especially around women, because of their respective physical deformities.

“But with Richard, his deformity becomes an excuse for a rampant release of will,” Ridge pointed out, of a man who overcompensates for his personal failings by dragging others down while selfishly turning inward.  “Cyrano guards and channels his will,” Ridge continued, contrasting a man who instead raises others up, while generously turning outward. 

Richard grows smaller through the course of Shakespeare’s play.  Cyrano grows ever larger. 

Beacon in a darkening world

It’s Richard and his naked will to power that comes closer to capturing the way we live now, which can make the idealism in “Cyrano” seem old-fashioned.  But as DeVita pointed out, “Cyrano” was already old-fashioned when it appeared in the demoralized France of 1897, at the height of the Dreyfus Affair that exposed the revered French Army as racist and unjust while tearing the country apart.

“Rostand called himself a smuggler of idealism into the modern world,” DeVita said.  “His play reminds us of those things we once believed in: Fairness. That people in authority wouldn’t abuse power. That people in authority had integrity and didn’t lie. 

“He recalls a time when being intelligent was admired and being well read made you seem physically more beautiful as a person.  Now, in this country, you’re considered an elitist if you can put a sentence together.  That’s a deep loss.”

“This play suggests that a dedication to ideals is possible,” Ridge said. “It suggests that there’s genuine power in unselfish love.  It invites people to change their hearts and minds and live in a different way.  What are we connected to?  How will we use our brains, hearts and spirits?  Answering those questions tells us how to move through the world, and that’s everything.” 

“Cyrano de Bergerac” runs June 23 through Oct. 6 in APT’s UP-the-Hill Theatre in Spring Green.  For tickets, visitamericanplayers.org.