AY! QUIXOTE. To 15 March.
London
AY! QUIXOTE
by Omar Porras and Marco Sabbatini based upon Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
Barbican Theatre To 14 March 2003 7.45pm
Runs 1hr 50min No interval
TICKETS: 020 7638 8891
www.barbican.org.uk/bite
Review: Timothy Ramsden 12 March
A fabulous realisation, catching the range of Cervantes' immeasurable book.One of the world's earliest, longest and greatest novels, Don Quixote has been subjected to widely varied stage translations, ranging from the bouncily joky to the narratively serious. The amazing thing about the Swiss-based, Colombian directed Teatro Malandro's bravura version (briefly here in the Barbican's International programme BITE) is its ability to convey a strong sense of the novel's breadth and depth. It does so by a mix of sparseness and theatrical profusion that never becomes showily indulgent.
First seen as screen shadows, to gentle guitar music, the rocking-horse steed, the Knight of the Sad Countenance himself, and (according to director Omar Porras) his alter-ego Sancho Panza, are characterful caricatures. In silhouette, their spindly figures takes on slightly exaggerated angles. Yet, as Quixote gradually musters, hat, sword and shield, it's as if he's taking on his personality.
These near-naked folk travel through a world often filled with gaudily-attired people. None are as real as the central comic duo, despite their 'manufactured' origins the production emphasises the fictional nature with ambient voices, one calmly narrating the novel's opening, others invested with a Quixotic call to arms and adventure.
At times the spectacle's surprisingly simple: the windmills simply a light shone through revolving blades: much later Sancho, seated as a cyclops-locust remotely high on his chair in state as an island governor, fondly recalls the adventure as a realistic mini-windmill peeps from the floor: the memory is more real than was the actuality. And more real than the gaudy Dali palace surrounding his new, unhappy Excellency.
Don Quixote is no mere figure of fun: if his mentality's lost its balanced, Cervantes is sure it's a noble mind that's been o'erthrown. This is never clearer than the scene where Quixote takes an acting troupe for Demons: that's how they're seen, distorted voices, exaggerated moves and swathes of angled, bold-coloured lighting. Yet within a few moments of their act he's reflecting, in near-monochrome quiet, how the actors doff their costumes to become equal, just as emperors and popes lie, after their lives' action, in the grave's equality. Simple presentation and performance gives the old thought a fresh sense of profundity.
By turns bold and restrained, raucous and mystic, luxuriant and chaste, this is a remarkable theatrical spectacle that includes better and lesser-known Cervantes episodes while embracing the scope of its remarkable original.
Cast: Madeleine Assas, Anne Cecile, Juan Antonio Crespillo, Claire Delaporte, Cathy Jane Emanuelle, Philippe Gouin, Joan Mompart, Omar Porras, Emiliano Suarez, Isabelle Turschwell, Caroline Weiss
Director: Omar Porras
Designer/Costume/Masks: Fredy Porras
Lighting: Jean-Marc Bassoli, Laurent Prunier
Sound: Ludovic Guglielmazzi
Music: Robert Clerc, William Fierro, Omar Porras, Andres Garcia, Sarten
2003-03-13 10:30:13