Cast Set For Virginia Gay's CYRANO at Traverse 1

Traverse 1 will play host to some of theatreland’s finest UK talent this August as the cast for Virginia Gay’s Cyrano is announced.

Included in that line up is Edinburgh born David Tarkenter fresh from The Motive And The Cue with The National Theatre on London’s West End. His other West End credits including The Red Barn and Endgame starring Daniel Radcliffe and Allan Cumming. 

Tarkenter will take to the stage alongside Cyrano playwright Virginia Gay, who will appear as the show’s eponymous hero, and ITV’s Ridley actress Jessica Whitehurst as love interest Roxanne. Casting for the show also includes Brandon Grace who appeared in London Tide with The National Theatre and Netflix hit Fate: The Winx Saga as Yan, Silent Witness’s Tessa Wong and Not Going Out’s Tanvi Virmani. 

Cyrano is a big-hearted, irreverent rom-com for our times. A joyous, gender-flipped retelling of Cyrano de Bergerac, packed with music, wit and aching romance. A love letter to hope, to overcoming loneliness, to language and desire; to the irrepressible magic of theatre. 

About the show

Cyrano is the most interesting person in any room – a wordsmith, a charmer. She works twice as hard and runs twice as fast as the pretty boys, because she’s deeply ashamed of something about herself. Enter Roxanne: brilliant and beautiful, with a penchant for poetry and a way with words, just like Cyrano. But Roxanne only has eyes for Yan: hot, manly Yan; who is dumbstruck around Roxanne. Probably shy, right? Until suddenly he starts saying the most amazing things. But it’s not Yan writing these perfect love scenes, it’s Cyrano ...

 The show is written and performed by Australian actress of stage and screen, writer, and director Virginia Gay (Winners & Losers, All Saints, Colin From Accounts, Dancing With The Stars) and directed by Clare Watson.

Taking the familiar story of Cyrano de Bergerac, Virginia Gay has written of seeking human connection. She did this in the imposed isolation of the very recent pandemic and her yearning for human connection and the joy of shared theatrical experience finds full voice in this piece. 

Virginia Gay says: “Cyrano is someone who's decided they’re unworthy of love, believes in the transformative nature of art and poetry, and is a hopeless romantic. You know, it’s all of us in our 20s. But so few people remember the original is a tragedy. So, if you’ve got a queer woman playing and reimagining Cyrano … well, I don’t ever want to be part of something that says queer love is impossible. What does it take to jump the tracks of the narrative and get a hard-won happy ending? Cyrano is about theatre: a writer who writes perfect dialogue for another, a more handsome version of themselves to deliver; the whole worlds we can build with just words and lo-fi-theatre-magic. It’s a love letter to live performance and what it can do, and how we can’t create this mad, bold, mass-imagining without the audience. We are so excited to bring this feisty, sexy comedy about love, hope and longing to the Edinburgh Fringe."

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