'La Mancha' Kicks Off HRST on Light Note

Harvard-Radcliffe Summer Theater (HRST) has begun their season with an appropriately light piece, Dale Wasserman's "Man of la Mancha," an upbeat musical retelling of Cervantes' Don Quixote.

Staged with convivial informality in HRST's Loeb Ex home, the production is carried by the same comic absurdity that made the novel famous.

The audience might be troubled by the earnest stiffness of the opening scene in which Cervantes (played by Eric Fleisig-Greene '00) is thrown into a Spanish Inquisition jail. The problem of seriousness is instantaneously solved, however, the moment Kenneth P. Herrera '03 as Sancho Panza opens his mouth and lets out his gloriously funny falsetto.

From that point forward, director Joseph C. Gfaller '01 does an admirable job of creating a production true to the schizophrenic nature of its main character: at once serious and silly, musical and straight, philosophical and plebian.

Starting with a perfectly lanky, idealistic and dreamy Greene playing Cervantes/Don Quixote, Gfaller has assembled a cast capable of filling out the costumes of these super-legendary characters. Kenneth Herrera makes a great Sancho Panza, capable of being both the devoutly loyal straight man and the perpetrator of Sancho's own brand of comic truth.

Watching the theatrical duo gallop around on toy-horses with the lanky Greene blustering away in a puffed-out tenor and the rotund Herrera squeaking a charming countermelody seems to hit right at the heart of Don Quixote.

Similarly picture-perfect in the role of Aldonza (Quixote's great lady/ local whore), Juliene James '00 carries off the part with Carmen-like blend of indignation, haughty pride and passionate song. Though at times her hurricane-like disregard for the other characters seems a bit overdone

(to the point of making her more tender moments with Greene slightly unconvincing), her skills as a vocalist add a tremendous amount and create the production's best musical moments.

The under-appreciated comic genius of the play may very well be John-Paul Giugliano '01in his role as Governor, Innkeeper and unsuspecting knight. Bearing the brunt of Quixote's delusion by providing him with both lodging and a stage upon which to play out his fantasies, Giugliano is the perfect small businessman. He struggles earnestly to please the demands of his no-nonsense wife (Lara Z. Jirmanus '01) while accommodating the out-of-control antics of his patrons without losing dignity.

Another of the production's great moments comes when Giugliano, adorably clad in a nightshirt and cap, makes very tidy work of dubbing Don Quixote knight, though he must do it three times in order to get it to Greene's satisfaction.

Though "Man of la Mancha" might be light, it's hardly simple. One can almost watch the script wander off in pursuit of deep philosophical riddles like "who was really the fool, Don Quixote, or the people that had no illusions?" or "which is really real? Wasserman's imagined Cervantes? Cervantes' imagined Quijano? Quijono's imagined Quixote? The play we are seeing, or the world outside of it? etc. etc."

Fortunately, every time these sorts of questions start to loom, it's time for a song and we can all relax back into lighthearted revelry.

By and large the production doesn't suffer much at the hands of the various "play within a play" permutations that comprise it. All of the actors do a good job of managing three or four different characters without letting one run into the other, and Naeemah A. White-Peppers' clever costume design aids them in this. Occasionally the show begins to drag when the lack of distance between the audience and the players makes it difficult to suspend disbelief.

Blocking and set change are both complicated by the small performance space and the lack of a curtain, and this production didn't have the perfection of design which is needed to surmount those hurdles.

As with most musical theater, the degree to which the acting needed to be stylized sometimes seemed to be in question, producing a similar sort of breakdown in the theatrical magic.

For the most part, though, Gfaller (who himself takes the role of an Inquisitor) manages to keep things light, showy and appropriately over-the-top.

Seeing a musical about a writer who produces a play based on his book, which is in turn about a man who makes up a character and then acts the part, is an unusual experience indeed. When one can do this and come out laughing it's all the better.

What is the summer for but to make light of weighty philosophy we're supposed to take seriously during term-time? That is what "Man of la Mancha" does for us.