Herbert Siguenza and ensemble (Photo by Jenny Graham)
Reviewed by Deborah Klugman
South Coast Repertory
Through October 28
RECOMMENDED
Staged with spectacular flair at South Coast Repertory, Quixote Nuevo, Octavio Solis’ sad, comic and very American play has evolved over time.
Solis first essayed a contemporary adaptation of Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote in 2009; commissioned by the Oregon Shakespeare Company, the result closely paralleled the structure of events on the original. His second iteration, somewhat later, contemporized the dialogue but left the story intact. Only after Solis presented his script to California Shakespeare Theatre’s artistic director Eric Ting, and Ting responded that the play was too “beholden” to Cervantes for his taste, did Solis realize what he had to do to make the play his own — invest it with his personal life experience, first as a Mexican-American artist living and writing during the egregiously anti-immigrant administration of Donald Trump, and second as a family member struggling to cope with the declining health of other members who were near and dear.
Quixote Nuevo is set in the fictional town of La Plancha, not far from the Texas/Mexican border. Solis’s quixotic lead character, Jose Quijano (Herbert Siguenza) is a retired literary professor suffering (as did Solis’s mother and mother-in-law) from deepening symptoms of dementia. Lately the old man has become obsessed with battling malevolent forces that in his mind threaten himself, his loved ones and the world. He’s also been seized with the notion of searching out his long-lost lady love, Dulcinea (whom, we’ll discover, is inspired in his imagination by a cherished memory from childhood of a teenage girl from an itinerant undocumented family).
To his relatives and neighbors, the aging professor has clearly lost it. His odd habits and growing truculence have made him a burden to his sister Magdalena, (Laura Crotte) in whose home he resides. At the end of her rope, she’s enlisted the local priest, Padre Perez (Sol Castillo) and a psychologist, Dr. Campos, (Maya Malan-Gonzalez) to help persuade her brother to relocate to a nursing home. But before their intervention can succeed, Jose Quilano takes off in his quest to right all wrongs and recover his love — his steed a shiny silver bicycle on whose handle-bars he’s mounted the skull of what had once been a workhorse in his father’s fields.
His adventures — accompanied by his neighbor Manny (Ernie Gonzalex, Jr.) whom he mistakes for Sancho Panza (and whose loyalty he buys with promises of wealth and power) lead him to encounter, among others, a group of frightened braceros and a physical altercation with the border guard who’s after them. Subject to blows on more than one occasion, the self-declared indefatigable knight gradually comes to see the magnitude of the forces beleaguering him.
Flush with warmth and wit, Quixote Nuevo presents like a colorful storybook that can be savored for its silliness and comedy and celebration of Tejano culture, but appreciated that much more for its barbed backhanded commentary on American racism and our disdain for the ill and poor. (It bears note that the story’s addled professor has grown up a member of the propertied class, who comes to understand only late in life the fate of other brown people less fortunate.)
Director Lisa Portes delivers a visually gorgeous staging, whose sensorial feats include lighting designer Pablo Santiago’s vermillion and twilight hues that brilliantly dominate the set’s picturesque desert landscape (scenic design Elfren Delgadillo Jr.). Costumer and puppet designer Helen Q. Huang playfully utilizes the calaca theme in her elaborate comic costuming. Sound designer David R. Molina’s versatile original music and Marissa Herrera’s animated choreography are often buoyant and zestful, belying the poignancy at the heart of the story.
And here’s the rub: While the ensemble is polished and there are entertainment moments aplenty, (I especially got a kick out of Alexis B. Santiago in her dual roles as Manny’s wife and a barmaid) I also experienced a lack of resonance and depth, especially where it counts, in Siguenza as the would-be knight and Gonzalez as his befuddled squire. The show has been staged at two other venues prior, and too often I felt as if I were watching some comedy riff delivered on cue, rather than a story with passion and heart revealed for the very first time.
South Coast Repertory, 655 Town Centre Drive, Costa Mesa. Check website for schedule; thru Oct. 28. www.scr.org. Running time: approximately two hours and 30 minutes with an intermission.
