Sunday, October 15, 2017

Man of La Mancha

This past Friday night, I visited the Smithtown Center for the Performing Arts with my daughter and my niece, for a performance of Man of La Mancha. We were originally going to go a week earlier, but my niece had a dance at her school that night that she wanted to attend, so we postponed our big night out together. It was mostly worth the wait.

Man of La Mancha is one of my favorite musicals. I first got to know it back in the Stone Age when I was in high school, when my school showed us the film version with Peter O'Toole and Sophia Lauren. They also showed us (I can't remember if it was before or after) a non-musical version of the Don Quixote story that starred Rex Harrison, which, sadly, has never been released on DVD (at least as far as I know). Later on, in college, I became one of the only people I know who hacked my way through an unabridged English translation of Cervantes' Don Quixote (which weighs in at almost a thousand pages long). I even wrote a one-act play based upon one of the episodes of the novel, Governor Panza, and I was lucky enough to be able to direct a live version of the play at Queens College. (Sadly, this "classic" has since been lost to posterity). So, as you can see, I know and love this story, in all of its various versions. And Man of La Mancha is probably my favorite version of the story. I not only own the film version on DVD, I also own several different albums of the music, including the film soundtrack, the original Broadway soundtrack with Richard Kiley, and a particularly bizarre operatic version that stars Placido Domingo as Don Quixote.

There's something about the philosophy of this musical that resounds inside of my soul. (I know that sounds like pretentious bullshit, but it's true). Is he a madman? Is he a hero?  Is he both? Throughout my life, there have been people, and stories, that have forced their ways into my psyche, never failing to touch me in some way or other. (For a different but similar story, I recommend the George C. Scott film They Might Be Giants. Or maybe just read the review I wrote recently of the latest album by The Gangsta Rabbi). I believe that the thing that reverberates with me is this -- when I was young, I was told (not entirely accurately, as it turns out) that the difference between Norse mythology and Greek and Roman mythology was that the Norse gods knew from the beginning that they were destined to lose, but the noble thing was to fight the fight itself, with all of your might, even knowing that you had no chance to win. That, for me, is the essence of Don Quixote's quest: "To dream the impossible dream/To fight the unbeatable foe". When done well, the play can always bring me to tears. (SPOILER ALERT: Don't read any further if you're unfamiliar with the play, and you don't want the ending spoiled for you).

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Still with me? Good.

Because the heart of the play isn't Don Quixote's death, it's the impact he has on the life of Aldonza. The scene where Aldonza crawls back after having been beaten and defiled by Pedro and his men is one of the mist powerful in all of musical theater. She unleashes on the good Don with all of the ugliness she's ever felt about herself, but no matter what she says, he holds fast to his belief that she is noble and good, the virtuous Dulcinea, not the illiterate kitchen slut Aldonza. At the end, when he's been "cured" by his encounter with the Knight of the Mirrors, she comes to him on his death bed. Desperately needing him to remember, she slowly brings him back to his true (and mad) self by reminding him of the words he used to her to describe his "Quest". This affects me every time. Because in that moment, the self-loathing Aldonza is forever transformed -- even after his death, she has been uplifted, and will never again forget the kind, beautiful part of her nature that has been her true self all along. Even listening to the cast album version of this last moment usually causes me to choke up. So, as you can imagine, I like to see my Man of La Mancha done well.

For the most part, the Smithtown PAC version did the trick. The set was excellent, and the cast was good-to-great. My only reservation has to do with some of the choices made by the director. But I'll get into that in a minute.

First, I need to especially call out the excellence of the performance of Brianne Boyd as Aldonza/Dulcinea. Her vocals were beautiful and stunning. As for her acting, she did a great job of bringing out the vulnerability of this hard-boiled (on the surface, at least) character. If there was a flaw in her performance at all, it was that she maybe had a rougher time selling the tough outer shell of Aldonza. But this is a minor fault. In every other way, she did a great job of eliciting the audience's sympathy, and her transformation at the end of the play was both touching and believable.

I also have to praise Stephen Treglia's Sancho. He played the part much in the way the character has traditionally been played (in the theater, at least, as opposed to the somewhat straighter way James Coco played it in the film). Consequently, his singing wasn't always beautiful, but it was certainly effective. And he was thoroughly likable in the role of Don Quixote's sidekick, who proudly explains to Aldonza, "I'm his squire. I'm his friend."

Michael Bertolini as Don Quixote has to carry of the play, and mostly, he succeeds in his triple role (playing Cervantes, Don Quixote and Alonso Quijana). Visually, you couldn't get a more perfect Don Quixote. As for the flaws, I think they mostly had to do with the director. What I mean here is that at the beginning of the performance, the play seemed a little lifeless, which I mostly attribute to the staging. In particular, the song "Man of la Mancha", during which Cervantes the actor transforms himself into the character of Don Quixote in front of the other prisoners of the Inquisition, and should be heroic and dramatic, came off kind of flat. I think this was largely because there needs to be a great deal more movement on the stage. (So maybe I should really be blaming Danielle Nigro, the choreographer here.) The scene should be pulling in the attention (and participation) of the other prisoners and of the audience, but unfortunately, something was lacking. Luckily, as the play continued, and the actors had a chance to draw us in with their characters (and with play's excellent music), it came more and more to life (especially once Ms. Boyd's Aldonza entered the stage). And as the night went on, Bertolini's interpretation got stronger and stronger.

While the rest of the cast members were all good in their roles, I want to give a particular shout out to Wendy Watt as Quijana's beleaguered (and not entirely compassionate) niece Antonia, who displayed an absolutely sumptuous singing voice during her part of "We're Only Thinking of Him".

Now to the directing. I don't want to trash the entire job here -- in general director Kenneth J. Washington was able to bring this play to life and make it an enjoyable experience, so overall, he was more successful than not. I had two problems with him, however. The first, as mentioned, was that the blocking seemed a little lifeless (and awkward), especially in the early part of the play. The other had to do with some of his choices.

Man of La Mancha is a weird duck, in some ways. It's filled, on the one hand, with a certain amount of slapstick comedy, as we see Don Quixote fight a windmill (offstage) to something less than a draw, and vanquish the muleteers (with the help of Sancho and Aldonza) in vintage Three Stooges fashion. But there's also an underlying heroism to the story, especially in the effect the Don has on Aldonza. And in order to reach that effect, there's a certain amount of darkness and violence, including a gang-rape that generally takes place off stage (not to mention the menace of the Spanish Inquisition that always lurks in the distance, and stops the play-with-a-play at various points, bringing the prisoners back to a frightening reality). A director always walks a fine line as to how dark to play these malificent elements.

In this case, the director went a little overboard. OK, maybe more than a little. During one of the little unscheduled play breaks, where the officers of the Inquisition interrupt to seemingly drag off Cervantes but instead grab another prisoner, the director chose to have this prisoner played by a terrified teenage-looking girl who is dragged screaming from the arms of her sobbing mother, presumably to be burned at the stake. Not only were the other prisoners traumatized by this, but the audience was as well.

Even worse is the violence against Aldonza. I get that it's difficult to get this right -- play it too light, and Aldonza's later transfiguration has less impact. But Jesus Christ, man! He begins the fight scene in the courtyard by having Pedro punch Aldonza full in the face (with a terrifying "crack" sound effect). Then, during the rape scene (which is often performed in a more symbolic and stylized fashion), she's absolutely pummeled, punched in the face again, then in the stomach hard enough to knock all of the wind out of her, before she's dragged offstage and raped, all the while screaming. Some of the other kitchen maids, attempting to save her, are throttled also. Then,  in an apparent attempt to atone for this scene of great violence against women (and presumably to appease the more feminist members of the audience), the two other kitchen maids get hold of a rope (or maybe it's Pedro's whip, it all happens very quickly), wrap it around his throat, and viciously choke him death! He does everything but spit and turn purple. I've never seen Pedro killed onstage before, and for good reason -- it doesn't make a lot of sense. Who drags Aldonza off into the desert (or wherever the hell they drag her off to). Why don't the two maids continue trying to rescue Aldonza? Doesn't anyone notice Pedro's large, lifeless body in the courtyard the next morning? It was a jarring scene that was just overdone. Even my daughter (who is a veteran fan of the most violent horror films imaginable) was a little taken aback by it.

Happily, the play gets back on track after that (although poor Aldonza's black eye and other cuts and bruises never let you entire forget it). 

I'm guessing that since Mr. Washington is also the Founder and Managing Director of the Smithtown Center for the Performing Arts, this review pretty much does away with the possibility of my catching some comps there in the future. But I have to call them as I see them. (And if you don't tell him, I won't, heh heh).

The end of the play still managed to get me to tear up as usual. And I know it had the same effect on my niece, who is a total theater kid, but never saw Man of La Mancha before. I couldn't tell if it worked on my daughter as well, and no matter how much I might ask, she'd never tell me. I do know that both of the young ladies enjoyed the performance, and that for most of the car ride home, my daughter had her 11-year-old cousin giggling with her own interpretation of "Dulcinea" (which somehow consisted of a teenage Don Quixote inviting Dulcinea to McDonald's to perhaps share a few Chicken McNuggets together, and naming his mule after her so that for the rest of the song, every time he sang the name "Dulcinea" he had to clarify, "No, not you Dulcinea, the other Ducinea, go back to your trough!") (I think my daughter might be one of those mad geniuses I told you about).

Anyway, to wrap it all up: Kudos to the whole team involved with Smithtown PAC's production of Man of La Mancha. In spite of all of my bitching, it's still a very worthwhile performance of one of my favorite Broadway shows ever. It's running through October 22, so you have one more weekend to catch it.