Professional ‘Man Of La Mancha’

Deserves A Longer Run

By Julie Stern

BROOKFIELD — First off, I think Brookfield Theater for the Arts should extend the run of its season opener, Man of La Mancha, beyond next weekend. They are playing to severely packed houses, and the quality of the production is so good, that hundreds, if not thousands more people would really enjoy seeing it, and it’s a great show to take your kids to – if they are age 12 and up.

Veteran director Wendell MacNeal, along with musical director Oksana Protenic, has taken one of the best musicals of all time and given it a staging worthy of its substance. In this play within a play format, the 16th Century soldier, actor and playwright Miguel de Cervantes is thrown into a dungeon to await trial by the inquisition for crimes against the church.

In order to save himself from assault by his fellow inmates, he “diverts” them by acting out the story of the crazed idealist, Don Quixote de la Mancha, whose mind was so besotted from reading chivalric romances that he set out to follow the open road as a “knight errant.”

In a world marked by hypocrisy, greed and thuggery, his “Impossible Dream” is to devote his life to doing brave and noble deeds. Accompanied by his faithful squire, Sancho Panza, Quixote tilts at windmills with his lance (imagining them to be monsters), acquires a barber’s shaving basin as a helmet, and battles a stable yard full of lowlifes to defend the honor of the kitchen maid Aldonza, (whom he believes to be a virtuous lady whom he calls Dulcinea)

What makes the show so powerful are the songs, both the lovely music and the clever lyrics. There are 22 musical numbers, and every one of them is a keeper, from the memorable “Man of La Mancha” and “The Impossible Dream” to the satirical “We’re Only Thinking of Him,” the haunting ballad “Aldonza,” and the mocking “Little Bird” – they all stir the heart.

And, director MacNeal has gotten three excellent performers for the principal roles. Miles Wallace as Cervantes/Quixote, Bart Geissinger as Sancho, and especially Katherine Dickson as Aldonza are doubly talented as actors and singers.

Performed with a large cast on a small stage with a single set, the show is essentially a pageant, with richly detailed costumes and props, almost continuous singing, but no dancing.

It is not at all static, however. There are some wonderful fight scenes and a devastating rape, carried out by the muleteers in the stable yard. Shawn Brown, Lonnie Young, Alexis M. Vournazos, Steve Hoose and David Tuttle stand out in the role of these brutal, swaggering thugs.

Staged as a two-hour extravaganza, with no intermission, this production of Man of La Mancha is a professionally polished, complete and total treat, and as I said at the outset of this review, it demands to be held over so that more people can get to see it.

(Brookfield Theatre for the Arts will continue to present Man of La Mancha for just two more shows: Friday and Saturday, March 11 and 12, at 8 pm. Call 775-0023 for ticket prices and reservations.)