THE THEATER MIRROR, New England’s LIVE Theater Guide
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MARQUEE | USHER | SEATS |
INTERMISSION | CURTAIN |
note: entire contents copyright 2005 by Carl A. Rossi
Don Quixote … Carlos Uriona
Sancho Panza … Matthew Glassman
Master Peter … Richard Newman
Dulcinea … Hayley Brown
The Duke … Justin Handley
The Duchess …Jeremy Louise Eaton
The American Repertory Theatre is currently sponsoring THE UnPOSSESSED, the Double Edge Theatre’s fantasia on “Don Quixote”. Conceiver/director Stacy Klein has selected passages from Cervantes’ epic satire and set them down “between the external nightmare that we have created and the impossible dream that we must risk creating”; neither of her leads resemble the famous Doré engravings: the Quixote of Carlos Uriona, a handsome, leather-lunged man, is a muleteer who has strayed in from MAN OF La MANCHA while Matthew Glassman’s sitcom Sancho Panza seldom budges from his perky athleticism.
Still, there are a few images that stick: the opening tableau of windmills and books; characters being rolled about in a huge hamster-wheel and, hauntingly, Quixote’s death done in shadow-play as he dwindles into eternity. Afterwards, I went away feeling too old now for this type of performance-art where getting down to the grubby Truth overrules presence, declamation and knowing how to move well from stage left to stage right --- but others may thrill to THE UnPOSSESSED as I did with similar fare over thirty years ago.