Tonight I saw a show at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. It is the opening weekend of the Elizabethan Stage, and am lucky enough to see all three shows there this weekend.
Oh man. First. I lied. it was not "Man of La Mancha" (the musical) it was "Don Quixote" (a play adaptation closer to Cervantes' book). I just didn't remember what i was told.
This play took place at the place where a child's imagination, a back yard play, and polished theatre meet. In that place you can see a world of imagination come to life as if you yourself are dreaming it. This was a world where an umbrella sprouts leaves to make itself into a tree, and of course the Barber's basin is a golden helmet. By the end of the play you believe that you may be a knight or that something magical just may happen on your way home.
From the director: "...One of the most active verbs to emerge from the recent presidential election season is "believe". This same earnest advisement propels the course of Cervantes' satiric yarn of Don Alonso Quijano. Feeling old age approaching and gearing he has never really lived, Don Alonso abandons the ennui of his prosaic life to pursue his romantic dreams. Reinventing himself as Don Quixote de La Mancha, righter of wrings, defender of damsels in distress and champion of the underdog, he charges for the challenge the world.
To bad he has no knack for it. Though fortified with more than a dash of delusion, a creaky collection of ancient armor and a grab bag of romantic plots, his extravagant efforts to become a valiant reformer result in a series of laughably dismal failures and generate nothing short of a comedic one man crime wave. But, hey, this guy is a sweetheart. His poor old midlife heart thumps in exactly the right place. Though he may perceive giants instead of windmills or warring armies instead of sheep, his every exploit is dedicated to the righting of wrongs and the liberation of humanity. Oh, yes--he is an idealist.
Corralling Cervantes' teeming imagination into a play for the theatre is akin to herding cats. So, out of the profusion of comic debacles, twists and torques of the novel, Octavio solis has deftly charted a course that celebrates certain wackily iconic legs of Quixote's journey and lets others evanesce back into the La Mancha landscape. In a homage to Cerbantes' narrative style, Solis zeroes in on the very idea of stories and storytelling. Here stories smash together and dance, begin and never end, seem to appear out of nowhere, and capriciously flip plots in mid-telling. Through all Quixote's fantastical meanderings, however, focus is never placed far from the higher purpose that drives him toward a deeper understanding of love and the realities of life.
Like Quixote, though perhaps lightly less deluded, w all assuredly have our windmills, those giants we must slay in order to make being human a better place to be, It is that same Quixote-like faith in a greater good that still allows us to believe we can conquer world hunger, end war or save the planet, Though scoffers a quick to condemn the idealist as mad, for our own sanity, like our hero, we must maintain the will to believe." -Laird Williamson
My favorite technical piece was by far the props/costumes (because sometimes i did not know where that line was drawn). Don Quixote's horse, Rosinante had the skin of a burlap coffee sack. Sancho Panza's 'ass' (yes, donkey) made of plaid. The puppetry made the imaginary come alive. Dulcinea ever an enigma, lived on stage in a puppeteer's hands. She allowed the audience to create their own Dulcinea.
This was a magical, childlike experience. A fabulous tale that makes you believe in your dreams.
