don Quixote
Nov. 19th, 2003 11:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
magidI went to see don Quixote at Brandeis tonight, and wow! It was amazing and wonderful, and highly recommended (four thumbs up :-); it's playing through Sunday. It's a short show (hey, ZZ, you could go before work without any problem!), but action packed, the product of a collaboration between the Brandeis theater department and the Double Edge Theatre. I'm impressed with the result of three weeks' work.
Tickets were taken up by the ticket booth; the audience wasn't allowed into the theater before the show started. Finally, a character appeared, draped in cloth, a small umbrella aloft, a 'monkey' making noises at his side, telling us that in a moment the doors would be open and we'd have four minutes to find our seats (walk briskly!). Also, all methods of communication during the show were discouraged, including passenger pigeon. And so it began.
When I entered, the lights were somewhat dimmed, but that didn't obscure the view of four people hanging from the ceiling, using long pieces of fabric hung from the lighting system grid somehow, wrapped around legs and arms for stability. The back of the stage was pretty open; that's where one person hung. The other three were distributed closer to the audience, but leaving room for the two windmills: people wearing long long dresses that obscured what turned out to be tall portable staircases, each gracefully waving two huge dark red banners around and around as they themselves were turned around and around. And all this was before the play had truly started.
Don Quixote came on, tilting at windmills, calling for Sancho Panza, and so it began. Don Quixote had an accent, and a wonderful leather aviator's helmet, complete with goggles, while Sancho Panza had much more peasant-y clothes. The rest of the performers took on a variety of roles, as the story demanded. They showed how he started out, how some of his adventures happened, his knighting, etc, with a couple of rather meta asides about Cervantes' book, and where they themselves appeared.
I haven't seen such use of acrobatics, music, and just plain oddity (if that's not an oxymoron) in a long time. The stage was irregularly sloped, which was used as people slid downstage, or picked up speed before using the hanging fabric to swing into space. People rolled onto stage in a huge wheel-like thing, which when laid on its side became a chicken coop (complete with chickens in hand and another (puppet) on the ground), or the frame for a rather aerial dance. There were shadow puppets, and stilts (for the devil, who had impressive shofar-like horns as well as a mask), and people moving around by balancing on huge spindles that rolled about. There were frequent 'parades' across the back of the stage, complete with live music; there were lots of moments when the performers were making music as well as being in character, both instrumental and sung. Oh, yes: Don Quixote's horse was a tiny quadricycle, which he rode around stage. His weapon was a broom, his shield what looked like a red triangular piece of scrap with loops to wear it on his back. And through it all he believed in a more poetic world, a Dulcinea dressed in white with a parasol streaming lace bands down it, the unattainable perfection who never showed her face, no matter that those around him saw the world wholly differently, where he became merely an entertainment for them.
There was a lot of use of careful lighting, focusing just where wanted, with shadow screens, red lights, spot lights. It was effective, but one light was too close to facing me; it distracted. Overall, though, this was small. At the end, one last parade with Don Quixote leading them, as he faced his end, those in the parade singing, and the lights faded, and then the singing faded as we vaguely saw Don Quixote behind the back of the stage, which had turned out to be a shadow screen. And then it was black. Applause did not bring the performers out for a curtain call, which seemed in keeping with the rest of the show.
I left totally blown away by it all.
Tickets were taken up by the ticket booth; the audience wasn't allowed into the theater before the show started. Finally, a character appeared, draped in cloth, a small umbrella aloft, a 'monkey' making noises at his side, telling us that in a moment the doors would be open and we'd have four minutes to find our seats (walk briskly!). Also, all methods of communication during the show were discouraged, including passenger pigeon. And so it began.
When I entered, the lights were somewhat dimmed, but that didn't obscure the view of four people hanging from the ceiling, using long pieces of fabric hung from the lighting system grid somehow, wrapped around legs and arms for stability. The back of the stage was pretty open; that's where one person hung. The other three were distributed closer to the audience, but leaving room for the two windmills: people wearing long long dresses that obscured what turned out to be tall portable staircases, each gracefully waving two huge dark red banners around and around as they themselves were turned around and around. And all this was before the play had truly started.
Don Quixote came on, tilting at windmills, calling for Sancho Panza, and so it began. Don Quixote had an accent, and a wonderful leather aviator's helmet, complete with goggles, while Sancho Panza had much more peasant-y clothes. The rest of the performers took on a variety of roles, as the story demanded. They showed how he started out, how some of his adventures happened, his knighting, etc, with a couple of rather meta asides about Cervantes' book, and where they themselves appeared.
I haven't seen such use of acrobatics, music, and just plain oddity (if that's not an oxymoron) in a long time. The stage was irregularly sloped, which was used as people slid downstage, or picked up speed before using the hanging fabric to swing into space. People rolled onto stage in a huge wheel-like thing, which when laid on its side became a chicken coop (complete with chickens in hand and another (puppet) on the ground), or the frame for a rather aerial dance. There were shadow puppets, and stilts (for the devil, who had impressive shofar-like horns as well as a mask), and people moving around by balancing on huge spindles that rolled about. There were frequent 'parades' across the back of the stage, complete with live music; there were lots of moments when the performers were making music as well as being in character, both instrumental and sung. Oh, yes: Don Quixote's horse was a tiny quadricycle, which he rode around stage. His weapon was a broom, his shield what looked like a red triangular piece of scrap with loops to wear it on his back. And through it all he believed in a more poetic world, a Dulcinea dressed in white with a parasol streaming lace bands down it, the unattainable perfection who never showed her face, no matter that those around him saw the world wholly differently, where he became merely an entertainment for them.
There was a lot of use of careful lighting, focusing just where wanted, with shadow screens, red lights, spot lights. It was effective, but one light was too close to facing me; it distracted. Overall, though, this was small. At the end, one last parade with Don Quixote leading them, as he faced his end, those in the parade singing, and the lights faded, and then the singing faded as we vaguely saw Don Quixote behind the back of the stage, which had turned out to be a shadow screen. And then it was black. Applause did not bring the performers out for a curtain call, which seemed in keeping with the rest of the show.
I left totally blown away by it all.