Still seeking the ‘Impossible Dream’

It’s rough living in a dungeon. Even worse when you have the Spanish Inquisition toying with your future and fellow prisoners putting you on trial for, among other things, being a bad poet. The great Cervantes, however, is nothing if not inventive. Enlisting the cooperation of his cell mates, he creates Alonso Quijana who, despairing of life’s ugly realities, begets the muddled old idealist, Don Quixote.

Dale Wasserman’s 1959 television special “I, Don Quixote ” ultimately led to a love affair with Broadway as the 1965 musical “Man of La Mancha,” a hit which produced five little Tonys. Forty-five years later, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza are still pursuing the impossible dream on community and regional stages throughout the country.

Now in its last week of performance, the “Man of La Mancha” at Wayside Theatre has found some of its dreams attainable and some just out of reach. On the strong side, scene designer Til Turner has transformed the little Wayside stage into a dismal, grey, sixteenth century holding cell for prisoners. Peeling paint, side tunnels, and a groaning, machine-driven staircase by which Inquisitors and prisoners may enter or leave does a splendid job of dropping us head first into Cervantes’ world.

Likewise, Paul Callahan’s lighting design nimbly distinguishes the real from the unreal, an important touch as we follow Don Quixote down the rabbit hole of his imagination. The compositions of Mitch Leigh, under the direction of Steve Przybylski, come to life in the back of the cell by five able musicians who also appear as muleteers, servants, etc. (The mandolin player was especially pleasing to my companion.) Costumes by Tamara Carruthers do an unreproachable job of accenting the grittiness of the place and the age.

Director Warner Crocker has his hands full with this large, interactive cast. Thomas Simpson plays Cervantes/Alonso Quijana/Don Quixote and, with his stature and fine voice, seems an understandable choice for the role. There are, however, moments of posing and declaiming that seem to be leading most of the cast into a habit of bellowing lines out of the lungs with very little emotion from the gut. It is understandable that the tragic/comic Quixote might assume heroic stances and pronouncements out of sheer contrariness, but that habit is limited neither to this character nor this actor.

One would like to believe that everything presented on stage is a director’s deliberate choice, but if that’s the case, it’s difficult to understand why fifteen actors playing many more characters cannot go a little farther in creating just a hint of Spain. This is in Spain, after all, and they all sport Spanish given names. A few actually do make faint stabs at a Spanish lilt, which only makes the want of it elsewhere more pronounced. R. Scott Williams as Sancho Panza, for example, plays the faithful old amigo with all the brashness of a game show host, a choice which throws off what could otherwise be a delicate and very sympathetic pairing.

Other moments are pure pleasure. “I’m Only Thinking of Him” performed by Antonia, (Thomasin Savaiano) the Housekeeper, (Aviva Pressman) and the Padre (David Sucharski) is a tightly woven bit of irony and harmony; “Little Bird, Little Bird” performed by the Muleteers is another. The barmaid, Aldonza, must carry the weight of her bad reputation as well as Quixote’s adoration which sees only his lady Dulcinea - and she must be able to sing. Nancy O’Bryan has it covered and is especially captivating in the songs “What Does He Want of Me?” and “Aldonza.” In a change of pace, the vivacious gypsy dance tests Don Quixote’s devotion to his chivalric view of mankind.

Less successful is the large brawl which takes on the strained, by-the-numbers look of a claymation battle and is finally resolved by turning the lights out. And I must add, though it pains me to say it, Muleteers: if you have to do a rape scene, then commit to it. Don’t be afraid that your theatrically sheltered audience might be offended and walk out. That, unfortunately, is how this awkward scene plays.

Underlined by Quixote’s indestructible theme song, “The Impossible Dream,” the enduring appeal of “Man of La Mancha” lies in that very core of hopeless optimism, the determination to fight the virtuous fight even though defeat is a given. Now in its last few days of performance, this production is nowhere near defeat, but neither does it approach that “unreachable star.”

Margaret Lawrence is a member of the American Theatre Critics Association. She teaches drama at CCHS.

Want to go?
What: “Man of La Mancha”
Where: Wayside Theatre Middletown, Va.
Call: (540) 869-1776
Playing through July 4