Cyrano's Cheap Thrill

Kevin Kline doesn't do a blessed thing wrong in the title role of "Cyrano de Bergerac." And, as his whip-smart inamorata, Roxane, Jennifer Garner does almost nothing right.

Yet David Leveaux's boisterous revival of Edmond Rostand's 1897 swords-and-sobs verse drama never offers the lift one can receive from great or, in those rare but almost as unforgettable moments, terrible theater. It just lumbers around the stage, dragging along a slew of staggering drunkards, giggling wenches and preening soldiers like so many stray puppies. It looks expensive, and it feels cheap.

This lassitude is all the more surprising considering Mr. Leveaux's track record Productions by the English director, a frequent visitor to Broadway, tend to fall into one of two categories: crisply realized re thinkings filigreed with dark nuances ("The Real Thing," "Betrayal," and the underrated "Fiddler on the Roof") or conceptually elaborate misfires ("The Glass Menagerie," the overrated "Jumpers").

But even when Mr. Leveaux has gone wrong, his errors have stemmed from reaching for the brass ring and falling on his face. The mistakes felt like the miscalculations of a man who loved theater and wanted to make it sing to his own stubborn, occasionally discordant internal harmonies. This "Cyrano," by comparison, smacks of little beyond a paycheck. Its fussy tableaux and popinjay costumes could have sprung from a financially stable but artistically impoverished regional Shakespeare festival. (Gregory Gale is responsible for those flowing capes and brocaded pantaloons.)

Mr. Kline, with his relaxed athleticism and unapologetically lush baritone, proved a bit too hardy to play King Lear earlier this year. Cyrano — the haughty, clever, stoically sentimental (and, yes, large-nosed) master swordsman who selflessly provides the sweet but dim young soldier Christian (Daniel Sunjata) with the honeyed words to woo the woman both men love — is far more in line with this gifted comic actor's seemingly inexhaustible brio. And he does not disappoint: Mr. Kline's Cyrano pulses with requisite vanity and arrogance but also with a deep vein of self-awareness at his sad and ridiculous situation.

The tantalizing love triangle, however, takes up only a tiny portion of the first hour; in its place, we get cutpurses and cuckolded bakers and villainous aristocrats and Cyrano's pre-emptive attacks on his own proboscis. ("When it bleeds, it's the Red Sea.") And while Mr. Leveaux has stocked his cast with a battery of dependable character actors to shoulder these scenes, including Euan Morton and Max Baker, their rustic antics quickly grow tiresome. (The one notable exception to this is Chris Sarandon, who provides a tinge of melancholy to the cartoonishly villainous Comte de Guiche.)

This delay in reaching Rostand's heart-tugging emotions is a lot more forgivable, however, once Ms. Garner awkwardly takes center stage. Claire Danes, Julianne Moore, and Julia Roberts have all received their lumps from critics (including this one) in recent Broadway productions. But each one of these stage newcomers held her ground with far more ease than the hapless Ms. Garner. While her work on television ("Alias") and in film ("Elektra," "The Kingdom") has shown Ms. Garner to be a formidable screen presence, her leaden line readings, flat vocal intonations, and fluttery hand movements reduce the similarly daunting Roxane — presumably Cyrano's intellectual equal — into a simpering, doe-eyed coquette.

Given this disparity in stage presence, it might have been permissible and possibly even preferable to see Mr. Kline lord over the production like a barnstorming matinee idol. Take it from Cyrano himself: "Excess, you see, / Is not excessive when it's been conceived / On principle. My success is achieved / Only by excess." (The sumptuous translation is by Anthony Burgess of "A Clockwork Orange" fame.) Mr. Leveaux, who flooded a Felliniesque spa with water in "Nine" and dared to confront the incestuous subtexts of "The Glass Menagerie," has hardly shied away from principled excess, and Mr. Kline's willingness to cut loose can be encapsulated in four words: "A," "Fish," "Called," and "Wanda." Alas, the two here are engulfed by the pantomimed shenanigans that unspool all over Tom Pye's roughhewn stone set.

The entire production provides exactly two compelling moments beyond those supplied by its leading man. One involves the sudden manipulation of two onstage tapestries in conjunction with the demise of a central character in Act IV; unfortunately, even here, Mr. Leveaux botches the heart-tugging disclosures that accompany this death scene.

The other moment comes during Rostand's marvelous Act III balcony scene, in which Cyrano stops supplying a bumbling Christian with sweet nothings and instead addresses Roxane directly with a risky but gorgeous declaration of love. As fine as Mr. Kline is here, the key to this scene comes from Mr. Sunjata, who heretofore had made a negligible impression. Suddenly Christian is faced with several unexpected realities: the heightened danger of being found out as a fraud; an elated sense that the ploy is working, and (this is where the scene ignites) a vague twinge that he might not be alone in worshipping Roxane — and that the ugly fellow with the beautiful mind might actually have the upper hand.

Perhaps for the first time in this pretty dimwit's life, Christian has no idea what is going to happen next. It is this step into the dangerous unknown, this willingness to follow one's nose down whatever treacherous or ennobling paths it leads, that remains stubbornly absent in this "Cyrano." The costumes are pretty, though.

Until December 23 (226 W. 46th St., between Broadway and Eighth Avenue, 212-307-4100).