"Why should providence allot such ugliness, such loneliness?" asks Cyrano of himself near the start of Anthony Burgess's lively translation of Edmond Rostand's play. And, despite the advice of his friend Le Bret that his wit and his courage could win him love, he continues throughout the drama to flaunt his ugly nose and hide his loneliness under his "panache".

Rostand was nothing if not an arch romanticist and, even if his 101-year-old play has got a mite creaky by now, its plot a little threadbare, its narrative relying as much on happenstance as on dramatic inevitability, it still packs in a significant amount of intelligent irony and romantic sadness as well as a modicum of good comedy.

Alan Stanford's new production gets the balance between these elements just about right, although there was an unevenness in the pacing last night which should settle as the run proceeds.

Cyrano's unspoken love for the beautiful Roxane is given voice when he becomes, with some initial reluctance, the voice of the handsome but inarticulate Christian de Neuvillette with whom Roxane thinks she may be in love.

Stephen Brennan's Cyrano is a massive performance, on stage almost all the nearly three hours of the action, athletically flamboyant, adept with his sword, swaggering with his fellows, heroic in his deeds, meek only when in Roxane's presence.

Donna Dent's Roxane is pastiche to his panache: the cardboard woman (at least until the final scene) who does what the 19th-century romanticist expects of her, and does it very well.

Risteard Cooper's Christian is similarly and effectively predictable. Johnny Murphy renders a lively Ragueneau as confectioner and camp-follower while Robert O'Mahoney provides a stolid and slightly sinister Comte de Guiche and Michael James Ford offers a sympathetic yet dramatically neutral Le Bret.

Bruno Schwengl dresses the huge cast sumptuously in settings that mark both the theatricality and the phoney reality of Rostand's original.

The whole colourful romance should prove highly popular.

Runs until February 6th.

Booking (01)874 4045.