Read This, Not That: Back-to-School Edition

Editor’s Note: It’s that time of year again — the time when there’s a crackle in the air, the leaves are just starting to curl, and you get excited by the sight of fresh, blank notebooks. A few years ago, we here at NR collected “read this, not that” recommendations for a better high school reading list. It is our pleasure to bring you another such list from NR staff, with the hope of piquing, not dampening, students’ enthusiasm for books.

Cyrano de Bergerac instead of the Usual Plays Typical reading lists might offer some Arthur Miller, maybe A Raisin in the Sun (civil rights shout-out), A Street Car Named Desire (watch those subtexts). All solid stuff. My nominee, however, would be what the critic John Simon called a fairy tale for adults. The play is romance, but it is splendidly done — passion, hurt, bravado, gallantry. Nothing can match the panache of Edmond Rostand’s couplets, but Brian Hooker’s blank verse translation keeps it formally on its toes. An anecdote from a stage production: Keith Mano’s wife, Laurie Kennedy, was playing Roxanne, the love interest, opposite Frank Langella as Cyrano, eloquent and ugly (heavily made up to be the latter). I forget who played Christian, the second male lead — handsome, brave, and plain-spoken — who borrows Cyrano’s words to woo Roxanne. Cyrano is the focus of all the many moments he is onstage, with one exception: the end of the fourth of five acts, when Christian is killed in battle and Roxanne, who has come to the field, embraces him, center stage. Langella was above them on a battlement, defying the enemy, where he sensed that the audience’s eyes were, for once, not on him, but on the pieta of love below. So he leaped down to get a part of the death. The actor playing Christian felt himself suddenly tugged one way, by Langella, then re-embraced by Kennedy. So it went as he wondered what the hell was going on, all the while doing his best to play dead. The drama of the play can sweep up non-actors too, and the first, third, and fifth acts all have climaxes differently but equally moving.