Actor’s work stands out like Cyrano’s nose

Richard Baird’s Cyrano de Bergerac, in a production of Edmond Rostand’s play of the same name at the Mesa Arts Center, stands as the finest acting to grace a Southwest Shakespeare Company stage in recent seasons.

It’s a masterful, riveting performance by the young Ashland, Ore., thespian: all bellows and grandeur, ferocity and swoon, unabashed melodrama and subtle nuance, in perfect measure. His Cyrano, the brash but insecure poet-soldier whose love for cousin Roxane cannot overleap his outsize schnoz, hints at both the Phantom of the Opera and, more overtly, Don Quixote, both sweet and tragic and entirely, achingly heartfelt.

Were one looking for a magical solo performance, this “Cyrano” would be the ticket. One hoping for a rapturous overall production, though, won’t quite find it here.

Against such bravura from its Cyrano (and firmly against the aphorism of a rising tide lifting all boats), the rest of the cast seems to shrink into the background. That’s even with the enlistment of sturdy Southwest Shakespeare regulars, including Eric Schoen (duelist Valvert) and Sandy Elias (the baker and poetry buff Ragueneau), and Actors Theatre’s “A Christmas Carol” Scrooge regular Kim Bennett as Cyrano rival Antoine de Guiche.

Elias, given expanses of awkward exposition in the three-hour play’s fifth act, sputters and steamrolls through. Bearded and bald-shaven Trey Clevenger, resembling a meaty Christopher Lowell as Cyrano chum and fellow guardsman Le Bret, injects real heart into his role. He’s able to see through his friend’s defensive ego for the nasal insecurity it’s meant to obscure.

Meanwhile, Stephanie Dodd, as Roxane, is a transparent thing. And forget Cyrano’s big prosthetic honker: I spent most of my time observing Mitchell Wyatt, playing the dull but dashing soldier Christian — the vacuous boy through whom Cyrano vicariously woos his unrequited love with poetry — wondering why his wig was so laughably huge.

David Ellenstein, a notable Shake- speare director from California, certainly wasn’t looking to turn this “Cyrano,” with translation by “A Clockwork Orange” author Anthony Burgess, into a one-man showcase. But he’s dropped a powerhouse into the center of an otherwise average-to-middling Southwest Shakespeare offering.

Kimb Williamson’s set design, it’s worth noting, isn’t as bad as the company’s laughably cheap-looking “Romeo and Juliet” offering earlier this season, which resembled three walls of primer-gray cardboard and smears of fake blood. But the “Cyrano” centerpiece, a clever multilevel wood structure that does double duty as balcony and battlefield barricades, does conjure images of a backyard deck-builder getting a bit out of hand.

Can one actor justify an entire production? Certainly. And Baird is more than worth the price of admission to this “Cyrano.” It’s a performance that can’t help but rip audiences from their seats in ovation, and one that deserves to be talked about for seasons to come.

It’s a shame, then, that the rest of the show should so quickly fade.