Something magical is happening in a corner of Park Slope for the next three weekends, as Brooklyn's Gallery Players tackle "Man of LaMancha" (1965), by Mitch Leigh (music), Joe Darion (lyrics) and Dale Wasserman (play), in an inspired, intimate and moving production, directed by Tom Wojtunik, conducted by Chris Tilley, and produced by Seth Soloway. "Man of LaMancha" opened on April 26 and runs through May 18. I caught the second performance, on April 27.
"Man of LaMancha" is about hope: that a playwright can divert his fellow prisoners, letting them know there is something better they can aspire to, even as he awaits sentencing by the Spanish Inquisition, and that a madman, in the guise of a knight-errant, can elevate and ennoble those he touches in the course of his delusional derring-do, no matter how mean their situation, how deep their despair.
When Jan-Peter Pedross, as writer Miguel de Cervantes, whitens his beard and mustache with makeup and dons breastplate and helmet before us and, sword in hand and faithful squire Sancho Panza, Robert Anthony Jones, by his side, rousingly tells us he is Don Quixote, the "Man of La Mancha," we share his vision. When he identifies a barber's basin as the legendary "Golden Helmet of Mambrino," invested with supernatural powers, he takes his fellow prisoners, pressed into the action as rough muleteer denizens of a rowdy inn, along for the adventure, as they join him in the spirited production number. Even without a baritone of operatic breadth, Pedross convinces us of the rightness of his "glorious quest" in "The Impossible Dream." Jones illuminates an affable portrait of Sancho with his songs "I Really Like Him" and "A Little Gossip."
The hardened heart the would-be knight touches most profoundly is that of the "kitchen slut," Aldonza, played by Jennifer McCabe, who introduces her earthy portrayal with a plangent "It's All the Same," ascending into legit head voice for the song's final high notes, and proves adept at giving back as good as she gets from her patrons, the muleteers. Quixote sees in her a courtly lady, his "Dulcinea," to whom Pedross sings a dulcet paean, and to whom the knight would dedicate his deeds, which drives her to distraction, but shows her that "the sky" is within her grasp. When the muleteers attack, we revel with Quixote, Sancho and Aldonza in their temporary victory over their taunting foes, but when she tries to turn the other cheek, as Quixote advises her, she gets raped, for her pains, by the rude company she keeps, in a scene that still has the power to shock. In her scorching "Aldonza," McCabe tries to make her swain see her for what she really is. McCabe caps her impressive account of the role with an affecting contribution beside Quixote's deathbed and leads the cast in an optimistic reprise of "Impossible Dream."
As members of the household, which Alonso Quijana leaves behind, when he sets out to tilt at windmills as Don Quixote, sweet-voiced Dawn Derow, as his niece and heir, Antonia, and full-throated Angela Dirksen, as the housekeeper, would gladly commit him, but insist, hypocritically, "I'm Only Thinking of Him." Among his fellow prisoners, Cervantes' most severe critic is one known as the Duke, so the playwright casts him as the harshest individual Quijana/Quixote confronts, Antonia's fiancé, Dr. Sansón Carrasco, and James Andrew Walsh is forbidding in both assignments, but even the obstreperous Duke quakes at the real power here, the Inquisition. In "The Knight of the Mirrors" scene, ingeniously handled here, with the most basic of props, Walsh dons armor himself to administer the play's equivalent of shock treatment to bring Quijana back to his senses. The family is advised by a knowing Padre and, in priestly robe, Mark Kirschenbaum sings a sweet "To Each His Dulcinea" and, in Quiana/Quixote's aptly heartbreaking death scene, chants the "De profundis."
As the Governor, judge of the prisoners' kangaroo court, cast as the Innkeeper, who humors Quixote and dubs him, Justin Herfel delivers a resonant "Knight of the Woeful Countenance."
Andrew Boyd, Jonathan Gregg, Alex Pearlman, Joe DiGennaro, Tim Shelton, Todd Metzker, Rob Langeder, Chris Kind, Patricia Lavin, Jenn Zarine Habeck, Aaron J. Thomsen, Luke Tudball and DeVonne Bacchus take other roles with distinction. John Kramer, Sharon Fischman, Dennis Michael Keefe, and Michael Beharie make up the rest of the instrumental complement, led by Tilley, which supports the singers. Martin Andrew transformed the small stage into a prison, David Withrow outfitted the players, and Ryan Kasprzak staged the fights and choreographed the dances.
"Man of LaMancha" plays at 199 14th Street, at Fourth Avenue, in Park Slope, on Thursdays through Saturdays at 8 pm and Sundays at 3 pm, through May 18, with Saturday matinees at 2 pm on May 10 and 17. Tickets at $18, $14 for seniors and for children under 12, can be purchased at www.galleryplayers.com or by calling TheaterMania at 212/352-3101.
