Martin Crimp’s adaptation of Cyrano de Bergerac moves like spoken word poetry and hits like a rap battle. It is funny, filthy, tender, and sometimes heartbreaking — and it gives young actors a rare opportunity to play with language as a physical, theatrical force. The play’s themes — masculinity, desire, insecurity, the terror of being truly seen — feel as urgent now as they did when Rostand first wrote them.

Cyrano is a soldier, a duelist, and a poet — a man of almost terrifying verbal gifts. But he is also an outsider, marked by his enormous nose as someone the world has decided doesn’t belong. In our production, Cyrano’s otherness will find a different form — one that anyone who has ever felt shunned or excluded by society will recognize. When Roxane falls for the handsome but tongue-tied Christian, Cyrano strikes a desperate bargain: his words, Christian’s body. What follows is a love triangle built on borrowed language.