Dramatic, poignant and laugh-out-loud funny. Cyrano de Bergerac shows at the Royal Shakespeare Company’s (RSC) Swan Theatre, with Adrian Lester in the title role. It’s a grand, sweeping romance with swashbuckling action, poetry, and a supersized nasal presence. Birmingham-born Lester, in his debut at the RSC, holds the stage, his personality felt before he appears in person.

We start in Paris, with the stage looking more traditional than usual – with footlights and a red velvet curtain as a backdrop. The play begins with a recitation by the voice of the people - Ragueneau (Christian Patterson) - to set the scene.

France is at war, and violence is inescapable. It’s a field in which Cyrano excels - he demonstrates his swordplay with elegance and wit. This conflict is no stage-fight – violence has brutal consequences, and Cyrano is not afraid to face them.

When it comes to love, however, he is less confident – terminally self-conscious of his oversized nose. He harbours a deep and poetic passion for his childhood friend, Roxane (Susannah Fielding), but she confesses her interest in a new recruit of Cyrano’s regiment, Christian de Neuvillette (Levi Brown). Christian can’t find the language to woo, so he borrows Cyrano’s words.

A great strength of the production is its writing. The story, originally penned by Edmond Rostand, has been co-adapted by Grime-poet Debris Stevenson and Simon Evans, who also directs. The resulting script swings from luxurious poetry to throwaway modern parlance. In this tale, words mean everything, and when communication breaks down, the text is carefully measured to reflect that.

The cast are universally engaging - highlights being Greer Dale-Foulkes as Roxane’s friend Abigail, who brings a great deal of character to relatively few lines, and Scott Handy as the Comte de Guiche, who slides regally into scenes, before his aristocratic veneer is broken.

Susannah Fielding as Roxane matches Cyrano beat-for-beat with wordplay and wit. The play is earnest and poignant, and there is a danger that it could fall into the trap of being trite, or that Roxane could become an object, passed unfeelingly between admiring men. Instead, Fielding brings undeniable brightness and guts to the character - Roxane and Cyrano light up when they are together.

In a play so deeply concerned with words spoken and unspoken, it feels appropriate that as last night’s play drew to a close, the audience were ready to show their emotion wordlessly - by way of riotous applause, and a standing ovation.

Five Stars

Cyrano de Bergerac was reviewed on Tuesday 7 October by Jessica Clixby at the RSC’s Swan Theatre, where it shows until Saturday 15 November