“This is a dream play of ours,” says director Audrey Barrett of Cold Frame Collective’s new staging of Cyrano de Bergerac. “It's a script that I have loved since I was in high school. Caroline [Bobbitt], my partner in the company, grew up watching the 1950 movie. So it was close to both of our hearts. And for years, we've talked about it very hypothetically. But it's a really, really big play and it requires a lot. So it's kind of been like in the future someday.”
After a few years of feeling not quite ready to tackle it, Cold Frame decided this year that it was time. “And then, yeah, we felt like we were ready,” Barrett says. “And we feel like, for being as widely adapted as it is – and it's just like one of the stories that is the most well known – the play is not produced very much. So we were just really excited to get to produce it.”
For this production, the famed poet and swordsman Cyrano is played by Kathleen Fletcher, who says she never expected to play the role in her career, but did a little online campaigning for the role anyway. “Audrey had posted on the Cold Frame social media the announcement of doing Cyrano and I sent a private DM that was like Lady Cyrano? And I kind of meant it in a joking way,” Fletcher says, “but also in a serious way of like, I just always want there to be more women in leading roles.”
Cold Frame has worked hard to create their own unique take on the classic play. “We have found ourselves doing a lot of classics,” Barrett says, “but we love to do them in ways that hopefully they will not have been seen before.” Still, Fletcher and Barrett have consulted a lot of adaptations and pop culture references to Cyrano.
There’s the classic 1950 film version with José Ferrer “which we both believe is just an absolutely brilliant adaptation,” Barrett says.
“There's a Star Trek episode that's a Cyrano riff,” Fletcher adds. “There's actually two!”
One of Fletcher’s favorites is also my own favorite film version of the play. “The movie Roxanne was a favorite growing up,” Fletcher says. “Starring Steve Martin, [it’s a] modern adaptation of Cyrano. That's the one that I can really reference. That and the Wishbone episode ‘Cyranose,’ which, you know, I really relate to.”
“I could rant about [Cyrano] forever,” Barrett says. I think I've just been in love with the character of Cyrano forever. He's so self-deprecating. But he has this cockiness that is just irresistible. He's just the coolest.”
“It's been such an incredible role to get to tackle,” Fletcher says. “And even just learning the script in such an intimate way. I remember going through it and fighting back tears. And by 'fighting back,' I mean I relented over to them. But [it’s] just such a funny, moving, complex script.”
'Cyrano De Bergerac' is onstage August 30 - September 14 at Sterling Stage Austin.
