Tadashi Suzuki performance based on Edmond Rostand play has the same name but contains some changes. The protagonist of the show is Kyozo, a samurai and playwright, who before dying writes an autobiographical play, which appears to be "Cyrano de Bergerac”. The action happens during the latter years of the Samurai reign.
"I was touched not so much by the play itself but by the mysterious years-long love of the Japanese people to this work of the French poet and playwright.. My performance is an attempt to solve this mystery, and this is how I've done it: Roxana and Christian are not real characters of the show but the product of the main character's fantasy. <...> In the play where the main character is the beautiful young french woman, Kyozo tries to tell the story of his dream lady and of the impossibility of this dream to come true in real life. These emotional experience is not only an answer to the question why Kyozo could not freely express his love to a smart and passionate woman but also reflects the interest, admiration, and the consequent feeling of inferiority experienced by many Japanese people before Europe with its "advanced" culture that served as a model for Japan, during transferring period from the Samurai era to a civil society. <...>
I think that the heart-breaking, I might even say, voluntary refusal by Cyrano to the happiness of the mutual love has found a response in hearts of many Japanese men. As it reflects both their valid until recently belief that indeed the most courageous, and right way of life for a man is to stay away from the woman you love, retaining spiritual purity, and, worship of everything European. So all these Japanese men of that epoch perceptions are the main character, the leitmotif of the show." — Tadashi Suzuki.
