Grove’s Cyrano Glories in ‘Most Romantic Play Ever’

If Michelle Pfeiffer, one of the world’s most beautiful actresses, can say she is less than happy with her looks because of the way her lips curl downward at the corners of her mouth, then it is easy to understand why Cyrano has such a profound reaction to his giant-size nose.

That at least is how Charles Lanyer, the star of “Cyrano de Bergerac” at the Grove Shakespeare Festival, explains what he believes to be “the universal appeal” of Edmond Rostand’s crowd-pleasing hero. For it is Cyrano’s feelings about his appearance, rather than what he actually looks like, that are the touchstone to his character and make this grandiose creature one of us.

“I don’t think I’ve ever run across anybody who was ever satisfied with his appearance,” Lanyer said. “Most of us feel that no matter what we’ve been given or not been given in the looks department, it somehow isn’t right. So Cyrano’s problem is something everybody identifies with, except that it’s exaggerated and made quite obvious.”

When Cyrano says, “Know that I glory in this nose of mine / For a great nose indicates a great man,” we realize that he is offering an eloquent bluff. After all, the fabled “nose speech” that follows is a preemptive defense. By calling his nose everything from “a perch” for birds to “a blue cucumber,” he invents a string of self-inflicted insults far worse than anything anybody else can hurl at him.

But Cyrano’s sense of himself as a freak of nature would hardly justify our interest by itself. Nor does it entirely explain the play’s enduring appeal. Although Rostand combines his hero’s provocative physical flaws with a compensating gift of poetry as wonderfully outsized as his nose, there is something else that makes this 90-year-old comedy work.

“It is simply the most romantic play ever written,” Lanyer said. “We have here a virtually non-stop paean to the glory and the joy, the hope and the heartache, of romantic love. What ultimately draws us to Cyrano and makes him so poignant is that he is a man who feels unable to achieve life’s greatest reward because of his disfigured appearance.”

The actor, 47, said he has wanted to play the role ever since seeing Jose Ferrer’s Oscar-winning screen performance many years ago in the 1950 movie of “Cyrano de Bergerac.” But he never thought he would get to do it because “these things are often a matter of chance.” Then, during June, director Tom Bradac called to offer him the role at the Festival Amphitheatre in Garden Grove after Gregory Itzin had to drop out when a television job intervened.

“It was pretty short notice,” said Lanyer, who has played leading roles at major West Coast theaters from Seattle to San Diego, including South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa. “I just sat in my living room and stuffed the lines in for six or seven days in a row. I wouldn’t let myself leave the house until I had cracked the back of the material.”

Some of the most eminent actors of the century have played Cyrano. The legendary Constant Coquelin originated the role in 1897 in the first production in Paris. Others who have performed Cyrano to great acclaim include Christopher Plummer and Derek Jacobi. Oddly, Laurence Olivier, who had a fondness for using false noses and would have seemed a natural for Cyrano, never made the role his own.

“What you have to do,” said Lanyer, who grew up near Seattle and lives in Los Angeles, “is make up your mind you are going to put your heart on your sleeve. You have to let everybody see it. You have to make the audience fall in love with you. I decided to go out there and be as impassioned and in love and as self-sacrificing as I can. That’s the nature of the man.”

The larger-than-life role also requires a larger-than-life delivery of Rostand’s elevated language.

“You want to hear the words well-spoken,” Lanyer said. “The verse demands it. You have to articulate those words in the rhythms imposed by the verse structure. If you take pauses in a naturalistic way, the energy of the line is destroyed. It’s as if you snipped the current. You must sustain the song just like a singer who keeps the melody going.”

And then, of course, there is the larger-than-life nose. (Ten of them, in fact.) Built on the bridge of Lanyer’s nose, Cyrano’s is a technical marvel so sensitive and flexible that it feels like an extension of the actor’s own

“It’s very comfortable, totally secure,” he said. “It has never even threatened to come off.”

ODD FACTS: “Sunday in the Park With George,” which recently closed South Coast Repertory’s 25th season, clocked in with SCR’s most expensive set ever. No figures were available. The former record holder was “Golden Girls” (since renamed “Going for the Gold”).

So says a booklet of odd facts being prepared for subscribers to the Costa Mesa theater. Did you know, for instance, that Shakespeare is South Coast’s most frequently produced playwright? He has had 11 productions, followed by Moliere and Harold Pinter (seven each) and Shaw (six).

Also at South Coast, the Hispanic Playwrights Project has landed Richard Beltran for the lead role in Octavio Solis’ “Man of Flesh.” The play is to receive a staged reading Aug. 12. Beltran is one of the stars of the current movie, “Scenes From the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills.”