The Heiress and Cyrano

In Henry James' short novel Washington Square, set in 1850 New York, when a homely, awkward and guileless young heiress named Catherine Sloper comes to believe, like her sophisticated father, that her own heartfelt belief in the love declared to her by opportunistic suitor Morris Townsend is folly, the scars leave calluses. A dramatization of that hardening of the heart, in a riveting performance by Heather Tom, is on full display at the Pasadena Playhouse in the latest revival of Ruth and Augustus Goetz's 1947 stage adaptation of the novel, called The Heiress, which opened Sunday.

There is much the same style of romantic love being declared over at Hollywood's Fountain Theatre by a hearing-impaired poet named Cyrano (Troy Kotsur) to a rock band groupie named Roxie (Erinn Anova). Because deaf Cyrano can't speak with his vocal cords, he uses his brother as a stand-in to declare his love: aging rocker Chris (Paul Raci), whose career is crashing. Though Chris can speak, he's no poet, yet the love of words and old-style romantic poetry is Roxie's soft spot. It's for this reason that the brothers Cyrano and Chris jointly woo Roxie. Cyrano composes flowery love letters for Chris to send via email and text message, in Stephen Sachs' new play, Cyrano, inspired by Edmond Rostand's 1897 Cyrano de Bergerac. The production is jointly produced by Deaf West Theatre and the Fountain Theatre, and also opened over the weekend.

Cyrano and Catherine share a couple of romantic convictions: that words are the earnest expressions of feelings, rather than decoys and diversions that mask hidden motives. This belief has them both eventually clutching the air in anguish when they're confronted by the realities of the world beyond their fantasies.

PHOTO BY ED KRIEGER

Cyrano (Troy Kotsur) tries to woo Roxie (Erinn Anova) in Cyrano.

Location Info

Map

Fountain Theatre

5060 Fountain Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90029

Category: Music Venues

Region: Out of Town

Photos

0 user reviews	Write A Review
Save to foursquare

Related Stories

• Urth Caffé Opening Soon in Pasadena
  August 20, 2013
• Homeless Recruited to Buy iPhone 5S in Pasadena Cause Ruckus
  September 20, 2013
• Coolhaus Copa Vida Now Open in Pasadena
  August 13, 2013
• The Masumoto Family Farm's The Perfect Peach South Pasadena Reading
  July 18, 2013
• Levitt Pavilions: Summer Lineups Announced
  May 20, 2013

More About

• Stephen Sachs
• Morris Townsend
• Edmond Rostand
• Arts, Entertainment, and Media
• Theater

The second conviction they share is that they are each unlovable and therefore consigned to loneliness, because of deficiencies they feel they each possess: Catherine comes to believe her father's judgment that she is without wit or grace, and is therefore vulnerable to the ruses of suitors who protest their love but are really after the inheritance left for her by her late mother. Whereas Rostand's Cyrano felt encumbered and ostracized by his oversized nose, Sachs' Cyrano has no such facial complexes. He instead believes that his deafness and his inability to speak render him a kind of freak to whom the hearing world condescends, so that much of his life, along with the play's action, becomes dedicated to his defying the larger world with swagger.

Pasadena Playhouse's The Heiress, staged with regal formality by Dámaso Rodriguez, shares the set and lighting designers employed for the just-closed production of Waiting for Godot at the Taper: John Iacovelli's palatial set brings a symmetrical faux-Greco grandeur to the front parlor of the home owned by Catherine's father, Dr. Austin Sloper (Richard Chamberlain), while Brian Gail's lighting design subtly conveys the slyly shifting points of view as Morris Townsend (Steve Coombs) comes a-wooing with assertive charm. The impoverished Morris storms Dr. Sloper's formidable barricade via an invite from his cousin, Arthur (Chris Reinacher), already engaged to the doctor's niece, Marian (Anneliese van der Pol). Talk of their nuptials sets Catherine's social clumsiness and spinsterhood in stark relief.

Catherine believes Morris' every flattering word, while her father will have none of it. (On opening night, Chamberlain found an increasingly powerful, imperious stride after stumbling over a few lines early in Act 1; meanwhile, the ensemble and audience had to endure the incessant buzzing of cellphones throughout the entire performance.)

The divide between father and daughter is not just one of attitude but of language. In the dialogue, Catherine says exactly what's on her mind, in contrast with her father, who tucks his words around a blend of decorum and a steadily growing sarcasm. Only in one climactic scene does he tell his daughter what he actually believes, that nobody will desire her for anything but her inheritance. She takes this as a brutally frank confession that he finds her unworthy of love, including his. These are not-so-creaky concerns, given new statistics showing how an entire generation of baby boomer women are choosing to live their lives alone rather than face the challenges and work of living with a partner, whether in or out of wedlock.

The beauty of Rodriguez's production lies in its ability, for the most part, to sustain Henry James' carefully marbled ambiguity as to the real motives of Morris Townsend, rendered by the playwrights with similar care. This puts Townsend on trial, with mostly circumstantial evidence, that seems to pile up against him as a con man, until he's defended by his sister (Jill Van Velzer), by Dr. Sloper's widowed sister, Lavinia (a fine performance by Julia Duffy), and, later, by himself. There's also a nice turn by Elizabeth Tobias as the housemaid, Maria.

As the suitor Townsend, Coombs has a roguish, translucent charm that plays well for a while. But as his life circumstances transform, he doesn't, which tilts the case against him, as though he is indeed replaying his former routines — as he's accused of doing. This approach subtly sabotages the story's primary virtue — of sustaining the mystery of his heart, thereby allowing our conclusions about him to say more about our own values than his.