Miguel de
Cervantes’ Don Quixote is one of
those books which, like its titular character, has assumed a life much larger
than anything its author could have dreamed of upon writing. It’s a sprawling
beast of a tome, written in two parts, and published ten years apart in the
early seventeenth century, and is very much about stories, telling stories,
living stories, and ultimately, becoming a story ourselves. It’s a mercurial
book, too, constantly shifting and changing, dropping in and out of layers of
metatextual conceit like Russian dolls or Chinese puzzle boxes; just when you
think you’ve got a handle on the narrative, it twists, disappears, and journeys
on to another adventure. In brief, it is the story of a man who believes he is
a knight errant by the name of Don Quixote, and along with his squire Sancho
Panza, journeys forth to right wrongs, and restore justice and order wherever
he goes. In one sense a satirical riposte to the proliferation of chivalric
stories at the time, it quickly becomes much more than just that, and becomes a
rhapsody upon life in all its complexities and contradictions. Ever since
reading the book two and a half years ago, I’ve had the impossible dream of wanting
to see it come alive, to watch the pasteboard knight gallivant across the Spanish
mountains with as much presence and life and aliveness as he has in the book.
Enter, then, Squabbalogic and their production of
Man of La Mancha.
Written by Dale Wasserman (originally as a one-act teleplay), with music by Mitch
Leigh and lyrics by Joe Darion, and premiered in 1965, it is not so much a musical
of Don Quixote or a musical of the
life of its author Cervantes (though it certainly draws heavily on elements
from both), but rather a musical based on
the world of Don Quixote. Taking a
page from Cervantes’ own book and methods, the musical opens in a Spanish prison
some time in the late sixteenth century, with Cervantes and his manservant charged with foreclosing on a
monastery unable to pay debts. Accosted by the inmates, Cervantes pleads guilty
to the charges laid against him, and seeks the opportunity to offer his defense
in the only way he knows how: a story – a play – acted out by the inmates
themselves. The story of the man of La Mancha .
