The Long Beach Shakespeare Company’s current production of “Cyrano de Bergerac” brings a youthful take on Edmond Rostand’s 1897 play. The play itself is witty and charming, but the young, mostly female cast infuses it with modern inflections and gestures, boldly having fun with the material and making it their own.
It helps that director Renee Schwarz bravely added a play-within-a-play dimension to the show, in which a troupe of contemporary actors is actually rehearsing “Cyrano de Bergerac,” slowly morphing into a full-on production.
In that added metatheatrical layer, we see actors dressed in everyday clothes meeting in rehearsal while the show’s stressed stage manager (Alex Lohman) checks her phone for production details. She tells one actor to ditch his sock puppet (“Say it to his eyes,” he replies) and another to put out her cigarette (which she doesn’t).
The opening of this experimental add-on is delightful, and I would absolutely watch a reality show of this ensemble staging any play. It does put the audience in a slightly awkward position at first because the troupe serves as their own audience as they read lines, peering from the sidelines and cheering each other on.
But once Paul D. Flores joins them as Cyrano — a confident yet unassuming soldier with plumed cap and long nose, as deft with his words as he is with his sword — it seems to throw the cast off balance as he’s already in character and fully costumed from the beginning.
The play seems to “start” at that point, though it’s hard to tell as the lines between rehearsing and performing still remain blurred, and it doesn’t help that the first scene of the play has the characters arriving at a play (within the play).
But we do meet Cyrano’s younger cousin Roxane (played with nuanced delicacy by Julianne Holmquist), whom he clearly loves and not just in a sisterly way. We first see her looking down from a window, much like Taylor Swift watching an NFL game from a luxury box, catching the eye of Travis Kelce, or rather handsome soldier Christian (Shane Weikel).
But though Roxane likes poetry, sadly for her, Christian is not very lyrical. Enter Cyrano, whom we see using words like mini daggers, not only to cut his enemies but also pierce Roxane’s heart like Cupid’s arrows.
Except he’s not winning her over for himself but for Christian, writing her love letters in Christian’s name and at one point even speaking for Christian to win him some make-out time.
There’s another beau in the mix as well — the powerful Compte de Guiche (played with relish by Ryan Hollon), who proves to be cowardly and selfish beneath his arrogance, especially during a war that Cyrano, Christian and their fellow Gascon soldiers must fight in.
Even playing starving soldiers on the war front, cast members throw themselves cheekily into their roles, yelling quips about empty stomachs and humming the Darth Vader tune from “Star Wars” when de Guiche enters.
And when Roxanne also makes an unexpected but regal appearance at their camp — somehow conjuring baskets of food from poetic French chef Ragueneau (Ren Warzecha, in a thick accent) — we see a captain (Charlie Rodriguez) amazingly swallow an entire bunch of grapes and drink an entire bottle of wine.
A final scene takes place 15 years later, featuring Roxane and Cyrano in an emotionally poignant moment — a fitting closure to a long love saga. The play itself is long, too, and could have stood some abridging, especially given the added “reality” parts.
But it’s refreshing to see an ensemble play their roles so enthusiastically throughout, adding joie de vivre to what must seem like dusty lines. The production also has fun with music — a perilous snippet from “Star Trek” plays during a sword-fighting scene, and Cyrano’s band of out-of-tune musicians sing snippets of The Police’s “Roxanne” and Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody.”
Above all, Flores’ grounded performance as Cyrano anchors the production, the ensemble boisterously swirling around him as he stays centered in his character’s clever brilliance. Flores’ delivery and demeanor capture his character’s self-awareness, self-possession and vulnerable heart from start to finish, making this (long) show definitely worth seeing.
Long Beach Shakespeare Company’s “Cyrano de Bergerac” continues through Aug. 29 at the Helen Borgers Theatre, 4250 Atlantic Ave., Long Beach, with shows Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. For tickets and information, call the box office at 562-997-1494 or visit LBShakespeare.org. Run time is 3 hours, including intermission.