Split Personality

It’s a change of gears--and noses--for soap opera star Lane Davies (“Santa Barbara’s” bad boy Mason Capwell), who’s donned a foam latex proboscis to play the title role in Edmond Rostand’s “Cyrano de Bergerac” at the Globe Playhouse in West Hollywood.

“You don’t get any better at the good parts by just talking about them or studying them,” says the Georgia-born actor. “You have to do them on a stage, in front of people.”

In his portrayal of Cyrano, Davis notes: “I’ve focused on the fact that he’s a soldier first, and a poet-philosopher-duellist second. Not that the lyricism isn’t there. But he’s also driven by anger. This is a man who’ll kill you if you make a remark about this nose--I think that tells you something about his personality. And he’s celibate. So there’s a terrific amount of emotional-sexual energy that’s been building up inside him.”

In the meantime, the actor has got his hands full with the continuing adventures of Mason Capwell. “Mason has split into two personalities,” he explains. “The other personality is the adult version of his invisible childhood playmate, Sonny Sprocket. Sonny likes country music, plays guitar, drinks too much and chases women--all the things Mason’s a little too repressed to do.”

The character, he adds, was created to remedy the fact that Mason (whom he’s played since the series’ inception four years ago) had been getting a little too domestic.

“Not that Mason was ever evil ,” Davies stresses. “He never actually killed anyone. He just believed a Machiavellian sort of morality: that the ends justified the means. He lied with a straight face, slept with prostitutes.

“But Sonny is an even less honorable human being. So he and Mason are fighting an internal war. It means I put on a tux and argue with myself from one side of the mirror. Then I put on cowboy clothes and argue with myself from the other side.”