JAMES McAVOY teams up once again with director Jamie Lloyd for another star vehicle in Edmond Rostand’s universally loved story about Cyrano de Bergerac, the man who is brilliant with language and the imagination but, in the real world, disfigured by a monstrous nose.

Cyrano loves Roxane to distraction but he is forced to watch her fall for traditional good-looker, Christian. While she is thrilled by poetry and romantic expression and craves exquisite love letters, Christian is useless with words and out of his depth.

So Cyrano steps in and writes a barrage of letters, purportedly from Christian, but actually issuing from the depths of his own crazed passion. Which one does Roxane truly love — the good-looker or the man who shares his heart and soul with her through language? It's a universal predicament.

All the ingredients are here for a West End success, with the brilliant original play getting a bang-up-to-date version by Martin Crimp. A diverse and relatively youthful cast are drilled to perfection and McAvoy struts his stuff with all the confidence of a man for whom charisma is as natural as breathing.

Lloyd’s production knows what buttons to press, while designer Soutra Gilmore’s contemporary and effortlessly casual dress code works effectively against a stark, rigid and unforgiving set with an absence of clutter or props, just microphones on stands.

In this reimagining of the play, Cyrano has a normal nose — gone is the pantomime snout of earlier productions — and we are left only with the power of words to create it, much as Roxane has only language to really know her man. It’s a bold step but a reminder that all theatre is about the power of the imagination.

Vigorous, comic, skilful and measured, this wonderfully assured production embraces rap and contemporary culture and speaks to a modern audience, though purportedly set in 1640. Engaging us in theatrical games, the performers acknowledge the audience’s existence and the suspension of disbelief is created only spasmodically.

Michele Austin as Leila matches the men for dominance, while Anita Joy Uwajeh as Roxane provides a strong feminist role model. And McAvoy, of course, fills the stage.

Audiences will love this show. But something of the simplicity of the original play is lost and I found myself diverted rather than moved by a love that reveals only personal isolation and self-regard.

Runs until February 20, box office: theplayhousetheatre.co.uk