Man! After last Thursday’s Senate hearings, the invigorated public debate about sexual abuse, and ongoing #MeToo revelations, the musical “Man of La Mancha” can be a gut-punch — even if you know that the second act contains a number commonly known as “the rape ballet.”
In the show (which takes some liberties with the plot of Cervantes’ novel), the irresistibly delusional Don Quixote sets up a situation in which Aldonza — a barmaid whom the errant knight-in-waiting has glorified and adored as the immaculate “Dulcinea” — ends up sexually abused by a group of men whom Quixote has just fought.
It has always been a rough scene to watch. Mark Lamos, the former artistic director of Hartford Stage who has now been running the Westport Country Playhouse for nearly a decade, doesn’t go for ultra-realism or graphic intensity. As the show requires, Aldonza dances into her terrible fate. It plays like opera: overwhelming, grandiosely grotesque, a tragic moment magnified until it is painful to watch.
But “Man of La Mancha” doesn’t stop there. It’s truly a musical for our times. It always did have a script that’s sharper than most Broadway musicals (by Dale Wasserman, whose equally adept adaptation of another classic satirical novel, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” will be done at West Hartford’s Playhouse on Park later this year). It cleverly distills central scenes from Cervantes’ epic novel in a manner that provides a clean beginning, middle and ending while also finding time for tilting at windmills and wandering outside a tavern in the middle of the night.
But what might once have been seen as themes of misplaced optimism or reckless abandon (“To Dream the Impossible Dream”) are now easily rethought as the follies of following fools into battle, or praising virtue and morality in a society that doesn’t acknowledge such things. You’ll hear messages about democracy, leadership, mob rule and that you may not have gleaned from this show before.
Lamos’ “Man of La Mancha” announces its dark, shadowy tone early on, then is able to stick with it. There’s comedy and tragedy, beauty and ugliness, truth and fantasy, love and hate, peacefulness and horrible violence, but no element jars or distracts by breaking Lamos’ seamless stylistic flow. Everything is tightly contained within the confines of Wilson Chin’s practical dungeon set (with large descending wooden staircase), Mitch Leigh’s multicultural Broadway-meets-flamenco score (evenly played by a seven-piece band situated in the theater’s balcony) and a cast that conjures up deep compelling characters with the effortlessness of donning a funny hat.
Philip Hernandez — whose Broadway credits include such difficult shows as “Kiss of the Spider Woman” and “The Capeman,” and who has played both Valjean and Javert in “Les Mis” on Broadway — brings a woozy vulnerability to Quixote. He’s likable but not pushy and overconfident, as others have played him. His loyal servant Sancho Panza is played by Tony Manna, a Yale School of Drama grad who in recent years has been seen at the Yale Repertory Theatre in “Cymbeline,” “These Paper Bullets!” and Mark Lamos’ all-male-cast “Taming of the Shrew.” Manna brings a boy-crush quality to “ I Really Like Him,” the song where Sancho attempts to explain his extraordinary devotion to his master.
Hernandez and Manna are a great team, but the real game-changer in this “Man of La Mancha” is the lead woman. (In this production, the cast size is scaled down to 14 people, of which only three are women.) Gisela Adisa brings a righteous earthiness to Aldonza. She has a gorgeous singing voice, one that she is willing to subdue when necessary for greater dramatic effect. Hearing her voice purposefully crack and falter as Aldonza suffers or faces hard truths, Adisa can break your heart.
This “Man of La Mancha” is well-conceived in every way. The musical, which originally premiered at Connecticut’s Goodspeed Opera House in 1965 and played off Broadway before moving to much larger New York theaters years later, has always seemed tidy and economical. It is structured as a show-within-a-show, with Cervantes spinning the tale of Don Quixote for his fellow inmates while he is languishing in a Spanish prison. There’s a genuine ensemble feel — we have no idea at first which of the prisoners might be taking the key roles of Quixote’s friends, detractors and amused bystanders. The characters emerge from the mist, as the fraught odyssey unfurls.
It’s a journey you’ll recognize — one of madness, romance, derring-do, political intrigue and appalling injustice. Pack carefully.
MAN OF LA MANCHA runs through Oct. 13 at the Westport Country Playhouse, 25 Powers Ct., Westport. Performances are Tuesday at 7 p.m.; Wednesday at 2 and 8 p.m.; Thursday and Friday at 8 p.m.; Saturday at 3 and 8 p.m.; and Sunday at 3 p.m. Tickets are $25 to $70. 888-927-7529 and westportplayhouse.org.
