Did Broadway really need another revival of Edmond Rostand’s 1987 romantic classic Cyrano de Bergerac a mere five years after the highly successful production starring Kevin Kline and Jennifer Garner? Not really, but this rendition by the Roundabout Theatre Company does at least provide a sterling showcase for Douglas Hodge in the title role. The veteran British actor, who won every award under the sun for his thrilling Broadway debut as Albin in the most recent La Cage Aux Folles revival, here delivers a stirring performance that is the highlight of this otherwise workmanlike production.

As usual, the Roundabout delivers excellent production values in the form of Soutra Gilmour’s lavish sets and gorgeous 17th century costume designs. But too much on display is otherwise prosaic, starting with a translation by Ranjit Bolt that, despite being in verse, sacrifices much of the work’s poeticism in a failed attempt at accessibility.

There’s a dullness that permeates the proceedings, including the bland performances by French actress Clemence Poesy, here making her Broadway debut as Roxane, and Kyle Soller, a young American actor who has spent most his career working in England, as Christian. While both performers possess the requisite good looks and handle the language well, neither delivers the sort of galvanizing turn that would fully invest us in their characters.

Among the large supporting cast, only the ever-reliable Patrick Page, recently released from his physically grueling chores as the Green Goblin in Spider Man: Turn Off the Dark, brings a stylish panache to his turn as the vengeful Comte de Guiche.

British director Jamie Lloyd has delivered a steadfast but lackluster staging that fails to fully capitalize on such fail-safe scenes as when the inarticulate Christian woos Rosalind on her balcony with Cyrano providing the romantic language.

Hodge, brandishing a impressively grotesque false proboscis, is the production’s true saving grace. He has a tendency to occasionally rush his lines and he’s both less overtly comic and tragic than such predecessors as Kline, Derek Jacobi and the Oscar-winning Jose Ferrer. But he cuts a truly dashing figure, handling both the swordplay and the florid language with consummate ease, and he’s particularly effective in conveying the character’s intense feelings of inferiority that prevent him from ever claiming the love that he rightfully deserves. He’s particularly moving in the play’s shattering final scene, when the aged Cyrano succumbs to his injuries as Roxane finally realizes that it was he who truly loved her all along.  Among the matinee ladies, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.

American Airlines Theatre, 227 W. 42nd St. 212-719-1300. www.roundabouttheatre.org. Through Nov. 25.