#we have spent 5 acts falling in love w this character & finally get a crumb of direct attention just before he dies. wahoo! 🙌

[pegasusdrawnchariots]

Poetic cinema: when Cyrano starts hallucinating (?) in Act V & eventually faces the front of the stage & says...

"Qu'est-ce que c'est tous ceux-là ?—Vous êtes mille ?" "Who are you all? Are there a thousand of you?"

...at the audience. Staring out at the crowd as if seeing them for the first time.

On the one hand, it's always good for a nervous laugh for the audience to break up a bona fide four-hanky finale.

But on the other, in the midst of Cyrano's dazed ramblings — the chant of the Gascony cadets, Copernicus this, Molière that — blindly addressing a "vous" that no-one else can see — speaking to the Grim Reaper as if there, tangible & visible before him — in the midst of all this, this line is a piercing moment of clarity between us & him. We've been getting a very good look at him for quite a while. We see him, naturally. But now, for the first time in 3 hours, he sees us.

(& on a third hand, bring out another hanky for when this line is addressed to a packed theatre. Cyrano, who's convinced that everyone finds him repulsive, sees that a thousand people have paid & stayed to see his story. Doubly poignant that Edmond Rostand wrote this thinking that Cyrano de Bergerac the play would be a flop ;-;)

Praise upon praise to productions who cause Cyrano to stare out into the auditorium at this line & sweep his gaze over the audience members 🤍 In a witty play full of subtle asides, a play that starts in a theatre (!!), this is the only 4th-wall break we have, & even then it can be played off as solely within the storyworld if the director wishes. Cyrano has a fatal head wound. Of course he can't see us, this is just part of his hallucinations.

In either case, the next line pointed at the audience is also good for a fond chuckle for our favourite bataillard, whose self-professed pleasure is to make new enemies:

"Ah ! je vous reconnais, tous mes vieux ennemis !" "Ah, I recognise you all, my old enemies!"

It segues us gently back into his delusions as he starts slashing at phantoms.

But there was a moment of doubt before! Was that really a delusion? A theatre character with one foot in the grave (or one foot on the other side of the curtain, so to speak) starts losing his mind & catches a brief glimpse of the audience. Of course, as the monologue continues, it's revealed exactly who/what Cyrano is addressing & he is safely enclosed back in the storyworld. But that shimmering moment, that stunned "who are all these people?" compels me 💗