Man of La Mancha

I’m not sure I have enough enthusiastic adjectives in my vocabulary to say how much I enjoyed our recent trip to the Arizona Broadway Theatre to see Man of La Mancha. “Fabulous” will have to do. My all-time favorite musical is Into the Woods, but La Mancha is certainly in a tie with several others for second. We first saw this show in L.A. about fifty years ago. It was at the recently opened Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and it had Richard Kiley in the lead role of Don Quixote. We were young, dirt-poor teachers living in Barstow, but we just had to see this show. Our poverty got us two seats in the upper balcony where we feared either nose bleeds or an accidental tumble from our steep cheap seats to the ground floor. I can’t remember who played Sancho Panza, but it was a funny fat fellow that might have been Buddy Hackett but was more likely James Coco, who played it in the film version in the next decade. Even with all the research help on the internet, I couldn’t find much about this West Coast version of the play. It was a fabulous performance fifty years ago and equally fabulous in 2017 at the ABT. The score is dominated by “The Impossible Dream” which concludes Act I and is reprised at the start of Act II and twice more before the final curtain. What a perfect lyric to define knighthood’s definition of chivalry and romantic love—to protect the weak and defeat evil, to hold woman in highest regard, to defend her honor against all who would diminish her. How fitting that this musical should include a scene depicting the brutalizing of Aldonza, or Quixote’s Dulcinea. Fitting in that we’re in the midst of all these prominent men now being accused of assaulting or harassing so many women. From 15^th century Spain and its inquisition to 21^st century USA, some of our attitudes toward women have gotten better but not nearly enough better. Six hundred years and we still have the inequality of the sexes, still have episodes of man’s brutality toward women.

The voices were all exceptional, especially that of James Rio who played Cervantes/Quixote. Jessica Medoff as Aldonza/Dulcinea was a bit screechy at times, causing her to sharp a few notes. But she fit the character perfectly—the tough, sharp-tongued whore Aldonza and the softer, sweeter Dulcinea when she finally accepts Quixote’s image of her. All of the action takes place on one set, the underground prison where the men and women were being held for the trials by the Inquisition. Again, I’m amazed at what his dinner theater can accomplish in such a small venue, with such a small stage. The set had six entrances, the most dramatic of which was the descending passage along the back to the wide ramp lowered and raised by chains, lowered for the soldiers of the Inquisition, raised to contain the prisoners. When Cervantes joins them, the others mistrust him and would put him on trial in their own kangaroo court with jurors (the prisoners) stacked against him. Cervantes defends himself by telling them the story he has written about the would-be knight Don Quixote. And thus, the story within a story. If you get a chance to see this musical at ABT or anywhere else, take it. You’ll laugh and weep a bit just as I did.