Sexy Cyrano

The day starts in rehearsal with Jamie Lloyd, James McAvoy, and the cast adjusting to BAM Harvey Theater’s wider stage, mapping how much to spread themselves out to accommodate it. “This theater’s got its own vibe,” McAvoy says. “The silences in it are incredible.”

Midway through the day, McAvoy scarfs down some roast chicken and fries from Chicken Stop down the street, “which I quite like.” It’s a hasty affair. “I like to eat my dinner real quick” after rehearsal, he says, to leave time to get in some rest and recovery before prepping for the show. 

In this adaptation, Cyrano’s characters wear modern dress as its actors would. “The boots in the show are my boots,” McAvoy says, as is the shirt he “lived in” for a while.

“The way Jamie likes to rehearse, it’s like we’re doing the play all day long.” So to avoid total exhaustion, McAvoy settles down on a cot, appropriate for a military character, in his dressing room for a little shut-eye.

Much of Cyrano’s rehearsals have focused on the specifics of the show’s intricate blocking. “The way Jaime directs is so precise that if anybody moves out of time, it draws focus away from where the audience is meant to be looking.”

McAvoy claims he hadn’t worked out in the seven months before revisiting Cyrano and has made getting back into shape part of his theater routine. “I’m quite short and stocky, and when I start to work out, I get like a tank, and that’s how I want to play him — like a tank.”

While working out and prepping for the show, McAvoy has “a little playlist going on” that helps him channel Cyrano’s braggadocio. “I listen to the Arctic Monkeys, I listen to a lot of Macklemore, and I listen to Black Keys and the Streets, like, from a long time ago.”

Cyrano depends on characters interrupting one another’s verse, so to get everyone in sync, the cast plays a game: Keep a ball in the air until everyone has touched it and then toss it in a bucket, if there is one. (They had to modify it to something more like volleyball when they got to America, sans bucket.)

“We all have such a good time playing the game, and it gets us together in the same place to the same frame of mind.”

Onstage, McAvoy switches between a handheld microphone and one taped to the side of his head, seen getting attached by a crewmember here. In Crimp’s translation, Cyrano has monologues that flow in reams of complex language. “Before the show, I’ll run through a couple of my bigger bits.”

“For this audience, I might have to slow it down a little bit, just for my accent.” As Cyrano, he speaks in his natural Scottish lilt and does everything he can to give Americans “a bit more of a leg up on this exotic sound.”

In Crimp’s version and this staging, McAvoy says, “Cyrano becomes an examination of self-worth through the eye of masculinity.”

Before the play, McAvoy must complete his ritual: downing a bag of Haribo gummy bears. He spends Cyrano pacing, fighting, lusting, declaiming. “Fuck me, man — there’s a lot of energy involved.”

Meanwhile, McAvoy in this moment sits at the back of the stage staring into a mirror, overhearing the other characters badmouth Cyrano and his nose: “I find it easy to start hating myself and come on with a big chip on my shoulder.”

But ultimately, “Jamie wants us to be ourselves.”

During the Glasgow run, Lloyd compared McAvoy to a rock star being hailed by his people. “I get quite attached to audience reactions,” McAvoy says. “There’s something great about the call-and-response.”