By Chuck Graham, TucsonStage.com
photo by Tim Fuller
Don Quixote (Philip Hernandez) and Sancho (Carlos Lopez) in Arizona Theatre Company’s "Man of La Mancha."
No matter how many times you have heard someone sing “To dream the impossible dream,” you won't truly know the naked defiance of that song until you hear Philip Hernandez sing it as Don Quixote in Arizona Theatre Company's achingly poignant production of “Man of La Mancha.”
This show is one of the best in ATC's 50-year history. Absolutely. Even better than last season's record-setter, “Fiddler on the Roof.”
Eschewing the inflated glamour of Broadway and the shamelessly over-operatic pandering that has become the traditional approach to this 1965 musical, David Bennett as ATC's director has pared away all that excessively over-the-top nonsense to reveal the tearful heart and iron-willed honesty that playwright Dale Wasserman put into “Man of La Mancha.”
All the original songs by Mitch Leigh and Joe Darion are there as ATC releases the dreamer's soul of Miguel de Cervantes, who wrote “Don Quixote” in the early 1600s, having the adventures of this true believer take place during the Spanish Inquisition of the late 1400s.
“Man of La Mancha” debuted on Broadway in 1965. Wasserman based the show's book on his earlier non-musical version “I, Don Quixote” written for television a few years before.
Bennett the director moved ATC's production of the Broadway show to Spain in the 1940s during the stifling rule of Gen. Francisco Franco, replacing all the usual schmaltzy stuff with robust flamenco music, dancing and Andalusian cultural flavors.
This gives the stage atmosphere a natural urgency that lays open the dreamer's soul flourishing in Cervantes, even though he was tossed into prison for refusing to compromise his sense of justice just to satisfy the government's authoritarian demands.
Quickly we see how much Cervantes' plight is like our own – feeling a quashed future for dreams delayed by an uncaring President whose personality is so unappealing. What is our hope? What can we do?
When Cervantes as Don Quixote says “Facts are the enemy of truth,” the ATC audience broke out in laughter, then applause.
Making the past feel like the present takes no time at all for Bennett. By having the collection of prisoners become the musicians, dancers and actors playing brief parts in the story that Cervantes (Philip Hernandez) and his wingman Sancho (Carlos Lopez) – to borrow a more modern term – tell with conviction, Bennett adds power to the earthly attitudes of these trapped men and women.
The prisoners were eager enough in the beginning, out of sheer frustration with their own shattered lives, to turn on these two newcomers that carry such scruffy suitcases. The soldiers had already proclaimed that Cervantes was arrested for being an idealist, a bad poet and an honest man.
But wasting no time, Cervantes and Sancho open those suitcases and begin pulling out mangy props and costumes to create the tale of a man so sorrowful yet so disarmingly profound that the resolute dreams of Don Quixote become the dreams of these desperate people.
Most touching is Don Q's insistence on the need to believe in the power of feminine ideals, beauty and perfection. He sees the hapless barmaid Aldonza (Michelle Dawson) and praises her beauty of both body and spirit, calling her Dulcinea,
Dawson nails Bennett's concept. She isn't beautiful, she has no manners. She is tough, but surely no equal to Don Quixote's vision of her as Dulcinea.
All the casting is strong, musicians and dancers as well as actors. There is almost a kind of scruffy attitude about the show, but in a good way. All natural, unprocessed, earnest in that pure sense Don Quixote himself would have demanded.
“Man of La Mancha” runs through Dec. 31, with performances at various times Tuesdays through Sundays in the Temple of Music and Art, 330 S. Scott Ave. Tickets are $25-$73. For details and reservations, 622-2823. Running time is approximately 105 minutes.
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