Ever since Constant Coquelin trod the Parisian boards as Cyrano de Bergerac in Edmond Rostand's play of the same name on December of 1897, we have lived in a Cyrano age. Rostand's play has never gone out of theatrical style or popularity, and every ten years or so an actor or production has come around to redefine Cyrano for a new generation. (Here I pause to acknowledge the Cyranos of Robert Symonds (Lincoln Center, 1968), Peter Donat (A.C.T., 1971), and Antony Sher (RSC, 1994), all stars of major productions but left out of this survey so as to clarify the historical narrative.) Cyrano himself has transformed over the last hundred years. He began as a unified figure in the traditionalist, tights-and-verse versions popularized by Coquelin (1897), Walter Hampden (1923), and José Ferrer (1946); in the countercultural '60s and '70s, Cyrano took on modern layers of psychological complexity and emotional uncertainty, and stars such as Christopher Plummer (1973), Steve Martin (1987), and Gerard Depardieu (1990) transformed the character in order to accommodate pictures of themselves; finally, our modern era of reinterpretation and adaptation has seen the story itself transform from a vision of a specific historical epoch to one of allegorical depth and theatricalist play. Whether relocating the play in late-imperial India (Ranjit Bolt, 1995), emphasizing the character’s paleo-existential qualities (Stephen Rea and Howard Davies, 2004), or stripping the cast down to archetypal sixes (Frank Langella, 1997) and threes (Jo Roets, 1998), the tale has proved surprisingly adaptable. In fact, the Cyrano story is one of the durable theatrical myths of our time, ever-recurrent on our stages, and changeable in a manner that reflects our own changing selves and times.