Event

Man of La Mancha

This wonderful musical is uplifting and inspiring to dreamers everywhere. The knight who tilted at windmills, the faithful squire Sancho Panza, the character sodare we say it? quixotic that his name was calqued into many languages. Don Quixote, the seventeenth century masterpiece by Miguel Cervantes, has long remained a well-loved literary classic. It is no surprise, then, that it has been the inspiration of many works of art, including ballets, operas, plays, paintings, and songs.

Dale Wasserman converted his teleplay into a musical, Man of La Mancha, in 1965. The musical became an immediate success and went on to win five Tony awards, including Best Musical, and Man of La Mancha itself soon became an enduring theatre classic.

Author Miguel Cervantes is incorporated into the story as the narrator, thus eliminating the need for drastic set changes. The musical begins with Cervantes being thrown into prison to await the Spanish Inquisition. While in captivity, he begins to tell the story of Don Quixote, the mad knight who swore to bring chivalry back to a world that had not seen knights in several centuries, fighting windmill "giants" and wooing serving wench "noblewomen" along the way. The author transforms into the character, his manservant becomes the faithful squire Sancho Panza, and their fellow prisoners also become various players in the story. With all the actors playing at least two roles (sometimes three), the themes of truth, deception, and inner character are emphasized, and the line between "fact" and "reality" is blurred. The result is a cast of characters with many layers, and the parallel stories work together as one.