William Shakespeare was not the only
global literary figure who died in 1616. It therefore seems proper for
the Royal Shakespeare Company to stage an adaptation of his exact
contemporary’s magnum opus: Miguel de Cervantes’
Don Quixote.
Cervantes’ great comic novel lends itself to imaginative staging. When
the ageing Spanish protagonist becomes obsessed with published romances
and comes to believe himself a chivalrous knight errant, his delusions
run wild. Even those who have never seen, let alone opened, the book
know the episode where he imagines windmills to be giants with flailing
arms. Director Angus Jackson and designer Robert Innes Hopkins pull off
the fantastical visuals with little set other than a few blocks and
tackle and some trapdoors out of which huge, near-cutout windmills can
be raised. They also cheekily make the knight’s horse and his squire
Sancho Panza’s donkey out of wheelbarrow-like timber constructions that
parody the puppets in
War Horse.
As the Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance himself, David Threlfall is
all glittering eyes, extravagant white beard and two-foot waxed
moustache, like a kestrel that has gone deep undercover. As the lazy,
cowardly Sancho, Rufus Hound continues his admirable journey from
stand-up comedian to skilled comic actor. Here he works the audience
and the script alike, due in part to masterly guidance on both
accounts. Adapter James Fenton has the literary awareness to catch both
the comedy and, especially in the second half, the poignancy of
Cervantes’s tale. He has also written sharp yet polished lyrics for a
clutch of songs. (Fenton wrote the first version of the English
libretto for
Les Misérables.)
And Jackson’s direction is bolstered by Cal McCrystal, credited as
“comedy director” and deft at letting us see round the corners of the
performance, as it were, and laugh at the staging as well as the
material.
So much great storytelling is about stories themselves: what happens if
we allow ourselves to be captured by them, but also how they are
crucial to enriching our lives. Cervantes’ may be the first great work
to address both these aspects at once, and the RSC production does
profound, joyous justice to it.
Written for the Financial
Times.