Actor and writer Virginia Gay will take to the stage this week to present her acclaimed version of the classic story of Cyrano de Bererac, the man with an enormous nose who helps his friend Christian find the right words to gain the heart of the beautiful Roxanne.

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Gay’s updated take on the tale of the famous romantic sees the part gender flipped as she becomes the secret wordsmith.

Graeme Watson caught up with Virginia Gay ahead of the play’s opening night at Black Swan State Theatre Company to chat about why she felt compelled to create a new and very different version of Edmond Rostand’s play from 1897.

How does this play and this story change when you change the gender of Cyrano?

The reason that I made this show was that I saw a production of Cyrano, at the National Theatre in England, just before the Apocalypse, and James McAvoy, who was incredible in it, played it without a nose.

And as soon as you take the nose away, it becomes incredibly clear, when it became incredibly clear to me, that this is a story about the queer body. About how you can be the most interesting, the most of the veracious, the most brilliantly well read, person in the room, but you can still have been taught to think about yourself that there is something about this body that you were born into, that makes you somehow unlovable.

Now, I think I’m thrilled to say that the narrative is changing around that, but a lot of us grew up with that narrative, right? So what I think is really extraordinary is that it was a really clear and beautiful and powerful, queer narrative.

I got to interval and I was like, “I need to do this show. I’ll do this incredible version” I bought two copies of the translation.

And then after the interval, because the show is French. Everybody goes off to war. Everybody dies. Love is impossible.

I was like, “Oh, God.” I mean, if you’ve got a queer female Cyrano. I don’t ever want to be part of stories that say that queer love is impossible. That trope of ‘kill your gays’.

I was like, “Well, if it’s going to be me in this role, I don’t know what we do with the second half of the show, because I will not tell it the way it is.”

I spoke to my director, the wonderful Sarah Goodes at the Melbourne Theatre Company, she said with such impunity, “Oh, well, it’s out of copyright, you just write your own ending, just write your own translation and change the ending.” And I was like, “Okay, I mean, maybe I should, maybe I could, oh my goodness.”

It’s very true about that sort of judgment of people’s bodies. I feel like women’s bodies are judged tenfold more than for men, but maybe less for gay men.

I’ve interviewed a few people lately, performers who have talked about the pressure they felt to have various surgeries. It really hit me that it’s not equality if we’re equally judging people’s bodies. We should get to the point where we stop judging people’s bodies.

Wouldn’t that be delightful. Wouldn’t that be a joy? I also very strongly thought it was, it seemed to me, to be a story too about female bodies. Yeah, I agree.

We just get taught that so much. I grew up with this narrative of, if only I could be prettier and smaller and thinner and take up less space, and think less, and chat less. Life would be easier for me.

What maybe a life where you take up space, and where you interrogate, and where you are filled with joy and enthusiasm is more valuable than perpetually monitoring what you eat, or whatever it is.

Cyrano is an interesting story. I think this is one of the stories which we all think we know, but maybe we don’t know it. That was my reflection. I thought I knew it but then I realised I only know, the premise of it. I don’t know the actual tale from beginning to end.

Exactly. I think a lot of people actually completely have forgotten that it’s a tragedy. That it ends originally in the death of everybody and Roxanne too. All of the men die, but Roxanne gets to be either a nun or a whore.

Isn’t that wonderful? Because it’s so great for women to have the full gamut of life experience, either a nun or a whore.

So yes, I think a lot of people in thinking about Cyrano understand the premise, get the premise. The idea that if you think you’re not worthy of this beautiful person’s love, you will take the tiniest scrap, you’ll do an awful thing to get just the tiniest bit of her attention, which is write the words for somebody else to seduce her by.

I should say this beautiful, brilliant woman, because that’s the truth of all Roxannes ever. She’s not just beautiful, she’s brilliant. That’s the most important bit actually, because she’s always disappointed by Christian, or Yan as we call him this version, who is also beautiful, but not brilliant.

I also think there’s a kind of, there’s almost a kind of Frankenstein kind a metaphor in it too. The terrible hubris that Cyrano goes through sort of in thinking that she can create the perfect man by putting her words into somebody else’s body.

And of course, in the great Frankenstein tradition, that that hubris actually gets close to destroying the thing that she loves.

I also think mostly people remember it as a happy story because of the Steve Martin film Roxanne, which is of course a romantic comedy and ends happily.

I thought of the Steve Martin film, and then I realised I’ve actually never seen it. I’ve just seen the trailer on so many VHS tapes in my youth.

I can tell you that it is actually a phenomenal film. And it is, until the happy ending, it is also quite a faithful rendition of the story, up until the point that it needs to change.

I had to go through and look at every adaptation of Cyrano, if I was going to adapt it myself, I had all of the adaptations. The Truth About Cats and Dogs is another one with Jeneane Garofalo and Uma Thurman.

The Steve Martin one is just really interesting too, because it actually it follows the structure of the play quite precisely, until the point it needs to change. There’s a fencing fight that he does with, with tennis rackets and ski poles. There’s the famous nose insults speech, which every Cyrano does.

When somebody insults him and he goes, “Sorry, do you think that’s an insult? You think I haven’t thought of like a thousand better insults. than that. For my own size, my own nose, let me show you, I will put you in my place.”

And again, I thought there was something kind of fabulously queer like that, the sense of, “You’re going to try and attack me for being different? I will put on an incredible response that shows you how spectacular I am, and puts you in your place. You know, this is like that’s drag culture.

That’s reading for sure. 

Yes, a self-read, that lands all the power back on the reader. It’s just so awesome.

This show got rave reviews when you first put it on, and now you’re bringing it to Perth. There’s a lot of anticipation. What does that do for you as a performer when a lot of people are really hyped about the show ahead of you. taking to the stage.

I’m going tell you it was already the case because we were shut down three hours before opening night in 2021. Then I did that monologue and Q&A. It was actually a huge amount of anticipation for our 2020 season, and I was.
terrified of that. I was pretty overwhelmed by all of that. I was like “Aww, it’s just a little play with a little woman’s heart on stage, it’s just a little story actually, I hope I live up to everybody’s expectations.”

I’m really excited to do it again. We have two new cast members, which is always just so exhilarating, to work with different energies, particularly different comic energies. We’ve got the incredible Joel Jackson, who’s joining us as Christian / Yan.

I’m so excited to work with him, I’m such a big fan. And of course, I unusually have a link to Perth, which is that I studied at WAAPA. I’ve been looking for a way to come back to Perth for many, many years. This feels like a really, really joyful, hopefully triumphant, way to come back to the place that taught me everything.

Cyrano starring Virgina Gay opens at the State Theatre Centre on Sunday and runs through to 5th March. Tickets are on sale now. 

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