Cyrano de Bergerac is that rarest of things, a perfect play: funny, tragic, action-packed, and boasting a larger-than-life hero you can't help loving. It bounces off the stage, as light and springy as one of Ragueneau the chef's souffles – and every bit as deliciously cheesy.

Normally Cyrano is a big-budget extravaganza, with richly brocaded 17th-century costumes, piles of food, barrels of wine, romantic balconies and trench warfare. I remember one production which, in the final act, featured a huge tree gently shedding its autumn leaves on the characters, and turning from green to gold, to red and to grey as the evening sun went down. It was beautiful and evocative, but was it really worth the cost?

Lara Machado's production shows that, even with a budget of zilch, Cyrano can still cast its magic spell.

Why? Because this play is about poetry, not props. Every character in it, from soldiers to marquises, is obsessed with poetry. Cyrano himself duels with a hundred assassins after alienating powerful men who disapprove of his views on acting. And at the heart of the play, Roxane, the love of his life, ultimately learns that true beauty lies not in the face but the soul. The script itself, written in 1895 by the ‘French Oscar Wilde’ Edmond Rostand, is a metonym for its central character: big, bombastic and written entirely in witty, elegant rhyming couplets. In the original French it's not only about the poet's gift to enrapture the mind and charm the ear. It’s a living example of that gift itself.

Briefly, Cyrano is a creative genius thwarted by the fatal flaw of having a big nose (of which more later). He is in love with his beautiful cousin Roxane. But Roxane has fallen for heartthrob pin-up boy Christian, who has good looks but no imagination. Solution: Cyrano finds a release for his passion by giving Christian the words he needs to woo Roxane. What could possibly go wrong…?

This production does away with virtually every aspect of stagecraft you might normally expect. A couple of chairs and a suspended bed-sheet stand in for the Hôtel de Bourgogne. A few plums, still in their Sainsbury’s wrapping, are the sumptuous victuals brought to the Gascony cadets at the Siege of Arras. Costumes are an occasional treat: Cameron Maiklem’s wonderfully big-hearted Cyrano has a cape, but apart from that most characters are wearing their own clothes and trainers. But Machado’s focus is on preserving the heart of the play, its language, and without the distractions of indulgent design, she allows us to focus on what really matters: the panache both of Cyrano's character and the play's sparkling wit.

With the spotlight so firmly fixed on language, the choice of translation is paramount. It can make or break a show. Last term’s production of Aeschylus’ Agamemnon in Magdalen Chapel used Ted Hughes’ earthy, erotic version from 1998, and it was mesmerising. This Cyrano uses a pretty lacklustre translation that feels more aimed at explaining, rather than enlivening, Rostand’s original. It’s not in rhyme, and feels more like a word-for-word accompaniment for those studying the play than a performance script. I was reminded of Martin Crimp’s revolutionary translation for Jamie Lloyd’s 2019 version, which not only managed to match Rostand’s original, rhyme for rhyme, but even elevated it to a kind of uber-Hamilton rap battle. (Lloyd also got rid of Cyrano’s big nose, which made his self-image problems more internal and psychological than comically Falstaffian.)

But even with a sub-standard translation, this a tale that still entrances audiences. Maiklem is joyous as Cyrano, laughing in the face of danger and, in the final scene, capturing his dying moments with tragic stature. Robyn Hayward portrays Roxane’s superficial skittishness, defiant rage and mature passion with consummate ease. Stanley Toyne as the Comte de Guiche is a gleefully rakish villain who nabs some of the best laughs with a few well-chosen, if anachronistic, gestures. And Mark Van Eykenhof is the ideal Christian, all flock of seagulls hair and boyish eagerness.

A lot of effort has gone into providing Maiklem with an outrageously protuberant nose (which seems to be affixed with copious quantities of Sellotape®). But I wonder if this pointy proboscis is but a muzzle of the mind. In truth, none of the other characters seem to think Cyrano is ugly at all. They only refer to his nose because they realise he is sensitive about it. Could it be that everyone’s favourite dysmorphic musketeer is using his own physical limitations as an excuse for his own lack of self-confidence? Or, on the other hand, is that nose his secret super-power, like Samson’s hair stuffed up a pair of enlarged nostrils?

Either way, Cyrano is the ultimate BFF story. In addressing sexual confidence and masculine fragility it feels both current and classic. Unlike Shakespeare, it hardly ever gets performed in Oxford. So this production, which makes up in character what it lacks in budget, is a welcome treat.