Lights sparkle on the skeletons of umbrellas dangling upside down. The Paris theater audience and the crowd come alive through the interaction of actors and puppets who move and dip and talk. Guardsmen arrive in somersaults.
Characters walk off in stylized marches.
The famous story turns on Cyrano's hopeless love for Roxanne. Condemned to love from afar, Cyrano takes pleasure in unburdening his heart by writing Christian's letters to Roxanne. Cyrano lives at odds with most of the ruling society. He can't abide falsehood, compromise, and stupidity, which author Rostand ascribes to 17th century court culture but which, of course, were rife in his times as they are in ours. Cyrano's bluntness makes him a lot of enemies.