Not everybody has a huge nose, but Cyrano’s anxieties are common

A glance at the Wikipedia entry for Edmond Rostand’s 1897 play Cyrano de Bergerac shows that it has been astonishingly successful with dozens of stage, film, television, and opera performances. I saw last night the roistering Royal Shakespeare Company production with an astonishing performance by Adrian Lester as Cyrano, and I found myself wondering why the play has been so successful. A provisional answer lies in the fact that I can remember a television version that I now know I watched in 1968 when I was 16. I remember the big-nosed, poetic Cyrano hiding behind a wall and speaking blistering love talk on behalf of an inarticulate but film-star handsome man. I didn’t have a big nose, but it was inconceivable to me that any girl or woman would find me attractive. (Ironically my big-nosed father was very attractive to women.) If I was ever going to get a girlfriend I would have to depend on my wits. I can still feel the pain of going to a dance in orange Levis (“You’re surely not…

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