At a time of year when many regional theatres succumb to the overwhelming tide of tinsel, it’s good to see the Royal Exchange continuing in its tradition of offering alternative festive fare. But what a pity that Greg Hersov’s production of Edmond Rostand’s great romantic comedy, in an adaptation by Anthony Burgess first staged by the RSC in 1983, features a Cyrano so hard to fall in love with.

If there’s one quality the character cannot do without, it is, of course, panache; and while Ben Keaton makes efficient sense of the rhythmic shifts, linguistic complexities and elegant punning of the text, he lacks both stature and weight. However much he flourishes his sword, we never believe in his deadly combative skills; nor do we glimpse much either of his charisma, or of the painfully suppressed passions that lie behind the witty tongue and catastrophic conk.

Hersov begins by underlining the work’s theatricality. During its opening playhouse scene, extravagantly costumed and bewigged actors mingle with the audience; there’s a slightly feeble attempt at anachronistic humour as two powdered popinjays pretend to espy Elton John and Dolly Parton among the onlookers. Such archness re-emerges later, in the famous wooing sequence in which Cyrano, speaking from his heart and out of the darkness, wins the love of his beloved Roxane for his rival, the pretty but none too profound Christian. Showers of white flowers cascade from above to a chorus of cod Gallic chanson in which the words of La Mer are changed to L’Amour; Oliver Chris’s laddish Christian is barely convincingly besotted.

This cheaply comic set-up obstructs the emotional and poetic power of what’s to follow, and Jessica Oyelowo’s Roxane is pallid. There’s a problem, too, with pace. Hersov has abridged Burgess’s translation, but there’s so little excitement and intensity here that it seems slow going. Rae Smith’s designs display flashes of inspiration; the battlefield where Cyrano and his comrades starve, and Christian loses his life, suggests the mud and misery of a First World War trench, while drifting autumnal leaves give Roxane and Cyrano’s eventual spiritual union the right elegiac ache. But the play demands more dash and sparkle than this production manages to muster.

Box office: 0161-833 9833. Until Jan 13