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Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac, an 'heroic comedy' of love and honour, has enjoyed various revivals in the cinema and on the stage, and undergoes yet another metamorphosis in this brilliant translation by Edwin Morgan. Made for the Communicado Theatre Company's production at the 1992 Edinburgh festival, it was a triumphant success with public and critics alike: it won a Fringe First award and also a special prize from the Hamada foundation, administered by the Scotsman. Morgan's Glasgow-based Scots version, with its verve and energy, reinvigorates rostand's classic with a sharp immediacy of both humour and pathos. There is a virtuousity of language that pleases the ear, but it is never allowed to override the emotional charge this famour story delivers.
'This is the play of the Edinburgh Fring, probably the play of the year in Britain, even further afield.' - The Stage
'Simply bursts at the seams with Glaswegian vigour; his swaggering, idiomatic drive, his fine, lyrical sweep, his cheeky rhymes all fuel an evening of marvellous, warm-hearted theatricality.' - The Sunday Times
Awards won by Edwin Morgan:, 2000 Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry
Praise for Edwin Morgan:'Edwin Morgan is the most dynamic, brilliant, free-wheeling poet around, endlessly accessible and inventive, glorious refreshment.' The Scotsman
'Morgan's poetry has always been large, vigorous and imaginative. It has been energetic and various.' lain Crichton Smith
'There seems no subject Morgan cannot alight upon with his effervescent art.' The Scotsman
'Morgan is just as capable of taking the breath away in cool, stanzaic English, as in roustabout Scots free verse.' VERSE
'For the range of his inventiveness, the generosity of his imagination, the moral alertness of his social observation. Edwin Morgan is the man for me.' Carol Ann Duffy
'Edwin Morgan's poetry encompasses the whole world. ... he should be at least as famous as Hughes and Heaney.' Liz Lochhead
'Edwin Morgan is probably the writer most influential (in this) generation of Scottish poets.' Robert Crawford
'(Morgan) is still at the height of his powers as storyteller, polemicist, lyric poet and translator.' Alan Brownjohn
'Mr Morgan writes in a way which I would characterise as generous and forceful as well as immediately sensible.' The Scotsman
'Mr Morgan is as versatile as he is inventive ... the qualities that most appeal are a capacity for celebration ... and an unsentimental humaneness, a considering sympathy.' TLS
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You and the Muse are total strangers, but
