Event

Man of La Mancha

Inspired by Miguel de Cervantes and his seventeenth-century masterpiece Don Quixote, the 1966 multiple Tony Award winning musical Man of La Mancha tells the story of the mad knight, Don Quixote, as a play within a play, performed by Cervantes, his manservant, and his fellow prisoners as he awaits a hearing with the Spanish Inquisition. Cervantes takes out a makeup kit from his trunk and in a few short moments, transforms himself into Alonso Quijana, an old gentleman who has read so many books on chivalry and thought so much about injustice that he has lost his mind and now believes he should go forth as a knight-errant, renaming himself Don Quixote de La Mancha and setting out to find adventures with his squire Sancho Panza. Quixote attempts to avoid his mortal enemy, the Enchanter, and woo the serving wench and prostitute, Aldonza, who he takes to be the lady Dulcinea. The musical continues to play in many countries around the world with its principal song, The Impossible Dream a much-loved standard.