The What You Will Shakespeare Company, known for its roundabout productions of the Bard, is at it again…with a different playwright! (Don’t worry, the play is still written in verse)
Coming off its also-not-Willy production of Doctor Faustus, WYWSCo is taking on the reknowned poet in the shadows, Cyrano de Bergerac, but as always, at an oblique angle.
The traditional play focuses on the famous triangle between Roxane, Cyrano and Christian, but the What You Will Take on things is much broader. Following several secondary characters, it offers the audience the chance to discover the outcome of smaller decisions these people made throughout their lives.
Says director Emaline Johnson, “In this show Christian is not stupid (the way he is commonly portrayed). He is intelligent but not eloquent and adding that element to his character makes him much more relatable and tragic — we all have so much we want to say and sometimes when the time comes the words fail us. Cyrano loves her and has the words to woo her but doesn’t have enough faith in himself. In that way they both use each other when winning her over, and they both know it.”
This weekend, Friday and Saturday, April 29-30, head to the Channing Murray Foundation on campus at 7 p.m. for a $7 ticket to a new spin on an old classic. Details can be found on the group’s facebook page.