Reviews 2014
Reviews 2014
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music by Mitch Leigh, lyrics by Joe Darion, book by Dale Wasserman, directed by Robert McQueen
Stratford Festival, Avon Theatre, Stratford
May 27-October 12, 2014
Cervantes: “When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies?”
For the Stratford Festival’s second staging of the 1965 musical Man of La Mancha, a question arises that did not when the Festival first produced it in 1998 – namely, “Why stage a musical when none of the principals is equipped to cope with the music?” Add to this a set design that makes no architectural sense and only highlights the flaws of the musical’s book and you have a show that is dreary and generally unengaging.
For a musical that has been popular ever since it opened, Man of La Mancha has a remarkably incoherent book. Dale Wasserman begins with the fact that Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616) once worked as a tax collector in Seville and was sent to prison in 1597-98 for embezzling money. During his time in prison he began writing the first part of his most famous work, Don Quixote. The first part of the novel was published in 1605, the second part in 1613.
In Wasserman’s version, Cervantes has almost finished writing Don Quixote and carries the manuscript with him into prison. He and his servant – Why his servant, too? – are placed in a dungeon for people waiting to be summoned before the Spanish Inquisition. In reality, the prisons of the Inquisition kept inmates isolated from each other. Wasserman, however, envisions a fantasy prison that houses both men and women who are allowed to share a common room for cooking and dining with the result that the male prisoners frequently rape the female prisoners. Although the Spanish Inquisition was formed to maintain Catholic orthodoxy, to expel non-Catholics from Spain and to root out anti-Catholic sentiment, the prisoners in Wasserman’s jail all seem to be prostitutes, poor people and violent criminals with no mention of heresy or religion as grounds for their confinement.
Wasserman has it that the prisoners try any new inmate for his crimes and then confiscate his property. Cervantes says that since he is a poet he would like to mount his defence in the form of a play. To do this he will play Don Quixote and his servant will play the knight’s faithful companion, Sancho Panza. To act out the events, however, Cervantes requires that the other prisoners take part. He has no playscript to hand them, but merely tells them what part they should play and by some kind of telepathy they do it. Thus, Wasserman’s Cervantes has landed in a prison full of inmates who may be criminals but surprisingly excel at improv.
Even if you, like millions around the world, buy into this far-fetched set-up, there is still the problem that it is impossible to see how telling the story of Don Quixote constitutes any defence for Cervantes being in prison. Not only that, but Cervantes’ story is left incomplete because he is summoned before the Inquisition.
Wasserman gives any director of the musical a further problem in that the prisoners both cooperate in staging a scene and then slip back into their default mode of being threatening brutes. Wasserman wants to keep the image of art appearing in the midst of danger constantly before our eyes even if it means sacrificing logic and realism to do so.
Given these difficulties inherent in the material itself, it is best to highlight the show’s theatricality by giving it the simplest production possible. Man of La Mancha was first staged in the round without a set at the now-demolished ANTA Washington Square Theatre in New York. It was last staged at Stratford in the Festival Theatre on a mostly bare stage that did include an unnecessary descending staircase and more props than could possibly fit in the theatre trunk Cervantes carries with him. At least in the present Stratford production director Robert McQueen tries to make it seem that all the props come from Cervantes’ trunk or from the prison. Also, Dana Osborne’s period costumes do look appropriately lived-in and dirty unlike the clean and far too pretty costumes by Debra Hanson in 1998.
Douglas Paraschuk has designed a peculiar set that tries to look grittily realistic but is architecturally illogical. He, too, has a descending staircase that officials use to bring in or take out prisoners. But, just outside the broken walls of the prison we see the rotating floor-to-ceiling blades of a windmill, needed to stage Don Quixote’s most famous battle. Thus, to enter the prison officials apparently walk through a hallway that is periodically sliced through by the windmill blades. The tunnel entrance to the prisoners’ pantry one storey below also seems subject to this design hazard. Although the prisoners keep saying they are held in a dungeon, Paraschuk’s design makes it appear they have been incarcerated in a windmill instead.
The male and female prisoners are segregated behind bars on either side of the set, but since they can easily walk around the bars, they are no impediment to interaction. Paraschuk has unnecessarily divided the playing area into two levels, the upstage area smaller than the downstage area and linked to it by three steps. For unknown reasons the upstage area is used for most of the action scenes which cramps both Mark Kimelman’s choreography and John Stead’s staged fights.
Actor Tom Rooney, who plays Cervantes/Don Quixote, can sing as he demonstrated in the musical Wanderlust at Stratford in 2012 and in Hairspray in Toronto in 2004. If, however, you associate “The Impossible Dream” with voices like those of Richard Kiley, who originated the role, or Robert Goulet, you will be disappointed. Rooney does get through the song but without the ease, richness or resonance of those voices. Most surprisingly, Rooney does little to distinguish the addle-pated Don Quixote from the fiery Cervantes in either voice, gesture, or movement until he arrives at Quixote’s deathbed scene. Simply in terms of acting, Rooney’s performance is a far cry from the finely detailed, deeply moving performance Feruccio Furlanetto gave as Don Quixote in Jules Massenet’s operatic retelling of the story seen just earlier this month.
As with Rooney, neither Steve Ross as Sancho Panza nor Robin Hutton as Dulcinea sing with the effortlessness one expects in professional theatre. In both cases the music lies too high for them. Ross struggles to sing his highest notes and Hutton’s voice in its upper register becomes reedy and thin. Given this casting, the smart solution would have been to transpose their music down a half or whole tone. Computer programmes make that quite easy now. That this was not done means that either the director McQueen and music director Franklin Brasz did not notice the problem or, if they did, were unwilling to fix it. As a result neither Ross nor Hutton will come off sounding their best for the entire run.
The one actor who does come off well as a singer is Sean Alexander Hauk as the Padre. He has a sweet, rounded tenor and his accounts of “To Each His Dulcinea” and “The Psalm” lends warmth and humanity to the otherwise unpleasant world of the musical. Shane Carty as the Governor and Sean Wright as the Duke, Dr. Carrasco and the Enchanter both do well in conveying menace in what are primarily acting roles. Cory O’Brien as Pedro shows he’s a dab hand with a bullwhip – though why is a prisoner allowed a bullwhip? – but he tries too hard to roughen his otherwise clear tenor in order to sound villainous.
The Festival website suggests that the musical is best suited to ages 12 and up, but since Act 1 ends with the violent gang rape of Dulcinea, I think that it would be more suited to ages 17 and up. Even then, since Rooney can’t make us sympathize with either Cervantes or Don Quixote, since Hutton gives such a monotone performance and since Ross has so few opportunities for comedy, the show is deadly dull. All the staged aggression of the prisoners seems like a vain attempt to bring the inert mass of the story to life. If you want to see a musical at Stratford and want to bring children aged 6 and up, Crazy for You is the one to see.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photos: (from top) Members of the company in Man of La Mancha; Robin Hutton as Duncinea, Steve Ross as Sancho Panza and Tom Rooney as Don Quixote. ©2014 Michael Cooper.
For tickets, visit www.stratfordfestival.ca.
2014-05-30
Man of La Mancha