THE STORY: An aging actor, forced into retirement after a lifetime on the stage, but knowing no other way to live, decides he will create for himself a life entirely of his own choosing. He takes up residence in a rundown, abandoned theatre, and hires other performers to come and act with him in a drama based on Rostand’s immortal Cyrano de Bergerac, in which he, of course, is Cyrano. However, the play is really a kind of perversion of the original in that it allows Cyrano to live at the close of the play, and also to win Roxanne as his own, forever. At first the actors are rather amused at the Old Actor’s comical and quaint actions but, ultimately, one of them becomes quite angry at the way he is being “used.” He challenges the Old Actor to a duel, following the true script of the play. The Old Actor now has to make a choice. He can accept the challenge and lose, as Cyrano did, or, instead, he can attempt to retreat as tactfully as possible—and thereby live to fight another day. His decision raises the play to a level of true tragic dimension, and saves the Old Actor from being nothing more than an escapist fool; showing him instead to be an honest, human, sympathetic character somehow pathetic and yet almost noble at the same time.
