But you’ve got to leave something on the stage and never get it back.” “You can do it physically you can do it emotionally. “That’s when I think theater is really, really thrilling,” he said. The thing is, though, he believes in its necessity. If, a few days after the West End opening, he looked fatigued around the edges when he sat for an interview, well, ritual sacrifice will do that to you, apparently. It’s an astonishingly counterintuitive performance, and when the audience falls into rapt, pin-drop silence during the balcony scene – as happened at the packed show I saw this month, and as McAvoy told me, without evident vanity, happens generally – it is the kind of thing that can occur only when an actor has an entire room perched in the palm of his hand. But in Lloyd’s lucid, funny, intimate modern-dress production, from a new adaptation by Martin Crimp, McAvoy’s verse-spitting Cyrano is like no Cyrano you’ve ever seen, pugnacious and gentle and explosive and still, with a profound well of tenderness just beneath his skin. Such ferocity might not seem to apply to playing Edmond Rostand’s gargantuan-nosed, love-struck poet, a role long trapped in the fusty amber of theatrical tradition. The community coming together to watch somebody give of themselves – I feel like theater has its roots in that somewhere.” “I think the first plays were probably some kind of sacrifice, be it animal or food-based or human even. “I’ve always felt like theater is slightly sacrificial,” McAvoy, 42, said in his Scottish burr. He’s even shaved off his floppy hair, buzzed close to the scalp in a sculptural fade – a sleeker look than the smooth bald pate of his “X-Men” character Charles Xavier, and a lot more military. 'About this title' may belong to another edition of this title.Night after night, on the stark set of Jamie Lloyd’s Olivier Award-winning production of “Cyrano de Bergerac,” McAvoy has no period plumes or prosthetics to hide behind as he plays the title role. In New York his work has been seen at the Public Theater and the Classic Stage Company, as well as on Broadway. He has translated or adapted work by Ionesco ( The Chairs, 1997), Genet ( The Maids, 1999) and Moliere ( The Misanthrope, 1996).His work in the UK has been produced by the Orange Tree Theatre, the West Yorkshire Playhouse, the Stephen Joseph Theatre, the RSC, the Young Vic and the Royal Court, where he was writer-in-residence in 1997. His plays include Three Attempted Acts (1985), Dealing with Clair (1988), Play with Repeats (1989), No One Sees the Video (1991), Getting Attention (1992), The Treatment (1993, winner of the John Whiting Award), Attempts on her Life (1997) and The Country (2000).

Cyrano martin crimp