"Cyrano de Bergerac" by Rostand (1985 TV) Derek Jacobi

"Cyrano de Bergerac" by Rostand (1985 TV) Derek Jacobi with The Royal Shakespeare Company

3 hours total time. Ripped from commercial VHS tapes

Writers:
Edmond Rostand (play)
Anthony Burgess (translation)

Directed by Terry Hands
Original Music by Nigel Hess
Film Editing by David Martin
Production Design by Ralph Koltai
Costume Design by Alexander Reid


Cast (in credits order) complete, awaiting verification
Jimmy Gardner ... Doorkeeper / Capuchin
Richard Clifford ... Cavalryman / Gascony Cadet
Robert Clare ... D'Artagnan / Gascony Cadet
Philip Dennis ... Flunkey / Gascony Cadet
John Tramper ... Flunkey / Gascony Cadet
Geoffrey Freshwater ... Musketeer
Alexandra Brook ... Flowergirl / Sister Claire
Niall Padden ... Eater / Gascony Cadet
Phillip Walsh ... Drinker / Gascony Cadet
Simon Clark ... Citizen / Gascony Cadet
Jayne Tottman ... Citizen's Son
Paul Basson ... Page
Stephen Kennedy ... Page
Raymond Llewellyn ... Pickpocket
Jeffery Dench ... Marquis 1
David Glover ... Marquis 2
Dennis Clinton ... Cuigy
Edward Jewesbury ... Brisaille
George R. Parsons ... Lignière the Poet (as George Parsons)
Tom Mannion ... Christian de Neuvillette
Penelope Beaumont ... Precieuse / Mother Marguerite / Lise
Clare Byam-Shaw ... Precieuse
Cathy Finlay ... Food Seller / Sister Marthe
Pete Postlethwaite ... Ragueneau
John Bowe ... Le Bret
Sinéad Cusack ... Roxane
Jennie Goossens ... Roxane's Duenna
John Carlisle ... Le Comte de Guiche
Christopher Bowen ... Le Vicomte de Valvert / Gascony Cadet
Christopher Benjamin ... Montfleury
Derek Jacobi ... Cyrano de Bergerac
David Shaw Parker ... Bellerose / Gascony Cadet
Raymond Bowers ... Jodelet
Ken Bones ... Carbon de Castel Jaloux
John Blyton .... executive producer
Keith Williams .... producer

Original Music by
Nigel Hess

Film Editing by
David Martin

Production Design by
Ralph Koltai

Costume Design by
Alexander Reid

Sound Department
Steve Blincoe .... boom operator

Stunts
Ian Mackay .... fights

Camera and Electrical Department
John Treays .... lighting technician
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Quality: VHS rip
Format: .wmv
Audio: 2.0 stereo, 256 Kbps
Aspect ratio: 4x3
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from The Observer, Saturday 22 October 2011
Lee Hall: the best performance I've ever seen
Derek Jacobi in Cyrano de Bergerac, RSC at the Barbican, London, 1983
Gemma Kappala-Ramsamy

A small group of us were on a school trip and our teacher, Hilary Durman, managed to get us possibly the worst seats in the house for Cyrano de Bergerac, the dramatic tale of a noble French soldier whose love for his cousin, Roxane, is obscured by self-doubt provoked by his ugly nose. As a 16-year-old you're really not expecting much of a night out at the RSC, but it was amazing. I think I fell in love with theatre that evening.

Cyrano is such a bravura part in an unbelievably theatrical play. Everything about Derek Jacobi's performance was larger than life. It was the first time that I had seen a great actor command an audience in that way. It was thrilling to see somebody who knew how to entertain with something that was so poetic and verbally dextrous, but all of that was just grist to the mad energy of the performance.

We were watching somebody using every bit of themselves. What amazed me was that all of those bits were for the same purpose, heading in the same direction. I was right at the top, hanging out of a balcony, yet I felt absolutely intimately connected with what was happening on that stage. Even more than 25 years on, it's clear as day to me.

It was the last night of this very celebrated production – Jacobi went on to win an Olivier for his performance. The atmosphere was charged and the ovation at the end was like a tidal wave. I didn't know that could happen at the theatre, that a couple of thousand people could get so carried away. It seemed to me much more like the gigs I'd been to at the time. It was an intoxicating evening, which I now realise is quite rare in the theatre!

The great thing about Cyrano is that he's just cleverer than anybody else. And of course he's the ugly duckling character, which is also something I've been very drawn to [in my work] – obviously Billy Elliot is an ugly duckling story about ballet and miners. There are many actors who can be passionate and inhabit a role vigorously, but the really great performances that I've seen have been when actors allow you to access their mind as well.

It's dry as sticks if it's only an intellectual thing, but when you access somebody's thinking and see the heartbeat of a character in that way, the combination makes the role suddenly come to life. Derek let you see that.

In the end, there's this incredibly romantic moment where you find out that Cyrano and Roxane have essentially been in love with each other and faithful to each other but they never knew. We were all in floods of tears, and as 16-year-old Geordie lads we didn't expect to be!

Quite often we [playwrights] come from a literary tradition. But a writer working in the theatre is writing for performance, to show actors off at their best. What Rostand and Anthony Burgess, the writer and English translator of the play, were trying to do in Cyrano was to give as much good material to an actor as they could. That's what I've been trying to provide in The Pitmen Painters, because theatre is located in that incredibly mercurial place that fine acting brings to life.

The Pitmen Painters is at the Duchess theatre, London