The Man of La Mancha
Show rating: ⭐⭐⭐
Values rating: ♖♜♖♜
This production proved an unexpected pleasure. Having rushed into the London Coliseum at a last minute invitation from a friend - finding time to remark how appropriately quixotic the mission seemed - and being unapprenticed in the ways of the Knight of Woeful Countenance, I was emotionally numbed by its beginning. It appeared to be yet another modern retelling of a classic, as Kelsey Grammer's statuesque Miguel de Cervantes is brought low amongst a large cast of trenchcoat-wearing thugs and dustbin fires, to await trial before the 'Inquisition'. The apparent wealth of the writer alerts the attention of his more run-of-the-mill cellmates and they immediately set upon his handsome costume and props collection. Out of bored cruelty and mistrust, they are set to cast his precious unfinished manuscript 'The Ingenious Nobleman Don Quixote of La Mancha' into the flaming trashcan before Cervantes convinces them of a right to trial for his unfortunate work.
At which point we thankfully see Grammer changed from modern dress into doublet and armour and becomes Alonso Quixano a.k.a Don Quixote and the story begins.
Grammer's stage presence carries both parts impressively. His Quixote's earnest belief in his own moral goodness is refreshingly uncomplicated, though this seems to come at the expense of the eccentricity of the character, which Grammer's considerable comedic talents could have done more to capture, as several reviewers have noted. It is also fair to say - as many have - that his singing is passable but nothing to write home about. On the other hand the reviewers have largely and unaccountably given short shrift to one of the great comedic turns of the evening, Grammer's fellow sitcom star Nicholas Lyndhurst. His shuffling, shambling innkeeper, drunk in every scene, gloriously topped by tricorner hat and later by Scrooge-esque nightcap, his opportunistic improvising through nonsensical conversations with Quixote, who believes his inn to be a castle, ("There is no chapel." "No chapel?!" "That is...it's closed - for repairs.") are hilarious. Only Giles Smith of the Daily Mail gives him his due, also praising his "menacing" governor of the prison. The one cast member who is universally appreciated is Danielle de Niese for her powerful voice and embodiment of Quixote's bemused love interest, 'Aldonza'.
James Noone's set is ambitious and old-school but not to the point of crowding the production. The imposing metallic staircase that descends to place the imprisoned Cervantes in his quarters effectively illustrates a world divided by rigid strata. The movement pieces in the second half are raw and energetic and to me chart the story's darker turn quite movingly, though from the perspective of someone to whom dance is like an extra-terrestrial language I defer to the budding choreographer - sat in front of me. "Really sloppy" he said, although he'd enjoyed the show overall.
The reviews on the whole have not been kind to this brave stab at resurrecting the 1965 musical. The "quixotically cast" Grammer (Michael Billington, Guardian) "soldiers stiffly" through this "dour production" (TimeOut). "What a mess!" declares the Express.
Fair enough, I'm new to this game and most of the criticisms appear well-founded. There is one that troubles me however, and it's one I encountered before even leaving the theatre. I got talking to friendly and successful actor who'd been in the audience. He had found the show largely pleasant but couldn't abide the depiction of Aldonza/Dulcinea's rape by a gang of thugs at her tavern. "It's a really troubling depiction of women" he said. I argued that any depiction of women in the 17th century - or, it could be argued, any century - should be troubling to some degree. It is in Dale Wasserman's book; to cut it would smack of whitewashing. Would it really be more progressive and feminist to pretend the worst thing women had to deal with in the 1600s was excessively polite elder madmen assuming their virginity? "I really don't think rape should be portrayed for entertainment" was another opinion, to which I countered (or would've if I'd thought of it) that it wasn't entertainment any more than watching the black-and-white images of Jewish bodies piling up in Schindler's List or the flogging of Kunta Kinte in Roots is entertainment. Just as very few paintings work without their share of darker shades, so no storytelling - outside of The Teletubbies - is effective without some exploration of the more dangerous regions of human capability. "But it's a light-hearted show, which suddenly turns incredibly dark, which feels inappropriate". The show opens in a prison of the Spanish Inquisition, my friend reminds us.
These objections have given me pause when expressed the next day in ink. But even in those reviews that pick up on it, it still seems to rest on logic assumed rather than actual. Alice Savile in TimeOut says the "danced rape scene...probably wasn't OK in the '60s but certainly isn't now" without any explanation why not. Stefan Kyriazis in the Express is the most unequivocal, in an outright condemnation of the scene: "one of the worst" he'd ever seen onstage and "the absolute nadir of the show", although perhaps fittingly he is more accurate than Savile in that he acknowledges the rape is technically 'off-stage' and the choreographed violence the audience sees is prior to the hideous act. Though this is probably splitting hairs.
The problem scene is "extremely prolonged, uncomfortable and borderline gratuitous". Predictably the weakest of this triumvirate of concerns is the one caught in the middle. There is no way - no way - that a scene of male violence towards women should be comfortable. Not for audience. Not for actors. Sorry. If the argument is that the topic of rape is so inherently uncomfortable that it should be taken out then that is different. But it takes us back to that issue of well-meaning censorship, that protecting audiences from what happens to women is next door to pretending it doesn't happen. We risk creating hundreds of Songs of the South, only the figleaf lying over the subjugation of women rather than black people.
'Prolonged'. It's true, it goes on a painful while. Perhaps it could've been shortened from its original length in Dale Wasserman's book. But once you accept the duty storytellers have - as I've tried to outline above - to portray and not shy from human malignity, then limiting it for comfort's sake can seem like a halfway house between that and outright censoring. Truth to be told, I am one of life's compromisers and that is probably what I would have done had I been in Lonny Price's shoes. But I don't see any justice in morally castigating him for not doing so either.
As for 'gratuitous', Kyriazis does elaborate: "it served absolutely no point to the plot to be depicted that way". No, but the essential artistic function of musicals is to portray the most intense and heightened emotions and happenings through song, music and movement, in this case just the latter two. Dulcinea finds herself considering Quixote's deluded propositions to be worse than the behaviour of the lecherous drunkards in her pub. She is sadistically wrenched away from the (very relative) luxury of that position, and realising that - for all its apparent insanity - there is goodness in Quixote's brand of earnest and adoring chivalry after all. It is hard to imagine a more emotionally weighty task in performance art. But one that - in the context of a musical - should surely be approached musically, and viscerally.
I left the theatre grateful for our polite disagreement, and more keenly aware of my assumptions as well as those of others, as I must admit that without it I would've continued thinking there to be no issue at all with 'that scene'. I was reminded once again of the value of airing opposing views in the same civil space, even while sadly it can seem increasingly like the Impossible Dream.
Values rating: ♖♜♖♜
This production proved an unexpected pleasure. Having rushed into the London Coliseum at a last minute invitation from a friend - finding time to remark how appropriately quixotic the mission seemed - and being unapprenticed in the ways of the Knight of Woeful Countenance, I was emotionally numbed by its beginning. It appeared to be yet another modern retelling of a classic, as Kelsey Grammer's statuesque Miguel de Cervantes is brought low amongst a large cast of trenchcoat-wearing thugs and dustbin fires, to await trial before the 'Inquisition'. The apparent wealth of the writer alerts the attention of his more run-of-the-mill cellmates and they immediately set upon his handsome costume and props collection. Out of bored cruelty and mistrust, they are set to cast his precious unfinished manuscript 'The Ingenious Nobleman Don Quixote of La Mancha' into the flaming trashcan before Cervantes convinces them of a right to trial for his unfortunate work.
At which point we thankfully see Grammer changed from modern dress into doublet and armour and becomes Alonso Quixano a.k.a Don Quixote and the story begins.
Grammer's stage presence carries both parts impressively. His Quixote's earnest belief in his own moral goodness is refreshingly uncomplicated, though this seems to come at the expense of the eccentricity of the character, which Grammer's considerable comedic talents could have done more to capture, as several reviewers have noted. It is also fair to say - as many have - that his singing is passable but nothing to write home about. On the other hand the reviewers have largely and unaccountably given short shrift to one of the great comedic turns of the evening, Grammer's fellow sitcom star Nicholas Lyndhurst. His shuffling, shambling innkeeper, drunk in every scene, gloriously topped by tricorner hat and later by Scrooge-esque nightcap, his opportunistic improvising through nonsensical conversations with Quixote, who believes his inn to be a castle, ("There is no chapel." "No chapel?!" "That is...it's closed - for repairs.") are hilarious. Only Giles Smith of the Daily Mail gives him his due, also praising his "menacing" governor of the prison. The one cast member who is universally appreciated is Danielle de Niese for her powerful voice and embodiment of Quixote's bemused love interest, 'Aldonza'.
James Noone's set is ambitious and old-school but not to the point of crowding the production. The imposing metallic staircase that descends to place the imprisoned Cervantes in his quarters effectively illustrates a world divided by rigid strata. The movement pieces in the second half are raw and energetic and to me chart the story's darker turn quite movingly, though from the perspective of someone to whom dance is like an extra-terrestrial language I defer to the budding choreographer - sat in front of me. "Really sloppy" he said, although he'd enjoyed the show overall.
The reviews on the whole have not been kind to this brave stab at resurrecting the 1965 musical. The "quixotically cast" Grammer (Michael Billington, Guardian) "soldiers stiffly" through this "dour production" (TimeOut). "What a mess!" declares the Express.
Fair enough, I'm new to this game and most of the criticisms appear well-founded. There is one that troubles me however, and it's one I encountered before even leaving the theatre. I got talking to friendly and successful actor who'd been in the audience. He had found the show largely pleasant but couldn't abide the depiction of Aldonza/Dulcinea's rape by a gang of thugs at her tavern. "It's a really troubling depiction of women" he said. I argued that any depiction of women in the 17th century - or, it could be argued, any century - should be troubling to some degree. It is in Dale Wasserman's book; to cut it would smack of whitewashing. Would it really be more progressive and feminist to pretend the worst thing women had to deal with in the 1600s was excessively polite elder madmen assuming their virginity? "I really don't think rape should be portrayed for entertainment" was another opinion, to which I countered (or would've if I'd thought of it) that it wasn't entertainment any more than watching the black-and-white images of Jewish bodies piling up in Schindler's List or the flogging of Kunta Kinte in Roots is entertainment. Just as very few paintings work without their share of darker shades, so no storytelling - outside of The Teletubbies - is effective without some exploration of the more dangerous regions of human capability. "But it's a light-hearted show, which suddenly turns incredibly dark, which feels inappropriate". The show opens in a prison of the Spanish Inquisition, my friend reminds us.
These objections have given me pause when expressed the next day in ink. But even in those reviews that pick up on it, it still seems to rest on logic assumed rather than actual. Alice Savile in TimeOut says the "danced rape scene...probably wasn't OK in the '60s but certainly isn't now" without any explanation why not. Stefan Kyriazis in the Express is the most unequivocal, in an outright condemnation of the scene: "one of the worst" he'd ever seen onstage and "the absolute nadir of the show", although perhaps fittingly he is more accurate than Savile in that he acknowledges the rape is technically 'off-stage' and the choreographed violence the audience sees is prior to the hideous act. Though this is probably splitting hairs.
The problem scene is "extremely prolonged, uncomfortable and borderline gratuitous". Predictably the weakest of this triumvirate of concerns is the one caught in the middle. There is no way - no way - that a scene of male violence towards women should be comfortable. Not for audience. Not for actors. Sorry. If the argument is that the topic of rape is so inherently uncomfortable that it should be taken out then that is different. But it takes us back to that issue of well-meaning censorship, that protecting audiences from what happens to women is next door to pretending it doesn't happen. We risk creating hundreds of Songs of the South, only the figleaf lying over the subjugation of women rather than black people.
'Prolonged'. It's true, it goes on a painful while. Perhaps it could've been shortened from its original length in Dale Wasserman's book. But once you accept the duty storytellers have - as I've tried to outline above - to portray and not shy from human malignity, then limiting it for comfort's sake can seem like a halfway house between that and outright censoring. Truth to be told, I am one of life's compromisers and that is probably what I would have done had I been in Lonny Price's shoes. But I don't see any justice in morally castigating him for not doing so either.
As for 'gratuitous', Kyriazis does elaborate: "it served absolutely no point to the plot to be depicted that way". No, but the essential artistic function of musicals is to portray the most intense and heightened emotions and happenings through song, music and movement, in this case just the latter two. Dulcinea finds herself considering Quixote's deluded propositions to be worse than the behaviour of the lecherous drunkards in her pub. She is sadistically wrenched away from the (very relative) luxury of that position, and realising that - for all its apparent insanity - there is goodness in Quixote's brand of earnest and adoring chivalry after all. It is hard to imagine a more emotionally weighty task in performance art. But one that - in the context of a musical - should surely be approached musically, and viscerally.
I left the theatre grateful for our polite disagreement, and more keenly aware of my assumptions as well as those of others, as I must admit that without it I would've continued thinking there to be no issue at all with 'that scene'. I was reminded once again of the value of airing opposing views in the same civil space, even while sadly it can seem increasingly like the Impossible Dream.
Comments
Post a Comment