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REVIEW: Don Quixote, Swan Theatre, RSC, Stratford-upon-Avon
20/04/2016
Rating: ★★★☆☆ by Colin Davison @IamColinDavison
It’s a remarkable coincidence that this Saturday, April 23, marks the 400th anniversary of the death not only of England’s greatest writer, but also of Spain’s, Miguel de Cervantes.
So it is happily appropriate that the company dedicated to Shakespeare should adapt his Spanish contemporary’s comic masterpiece for the stage.
It’s a remarkable coincidence that this Saturday, April 23, marks the 400th anniversary of the death not only of England’s greatest writer, but also of Spain’s, Miguel de Cervantes.
So it is happily appropriate that the company dedicated to Shakespeare should adapt his Spanish contemporary’s comic masterpiece for the stage.
Thanks to the usual RSC panache, the result is merry romp, despite the rather pedestrian script by writer James Fenton.
The impoverished Don Quixote lives in La Mancha, a village where so little happens that charming a wart is recounted as an event. Disillusioned, deluded, he sets off on a quest to bring back the (illusory) age of chivalry.
The peasant Sancho Panza goes along as his ‘squire’, well aware of his master’s madness. “Still, if it makes him happy,” he explains.
The inevitable ridicule, and very occasional triumphs follow, as the haunted hero pursues his fantasies. “I can never shake the watchman off my back, the wizard off my tail,” says David Threlfall’s mournful knight in one of his few memorable lines
Fenton, a former Oxford professor of poetry, seems happiest in writing the words to the lively songs that accompany the action, but sadly most of the dialogue is as flat as the Spanish plain.
His adaptation has an end-of-the-pier quality but with a vastly superior cast, and it would be a tedious first half were it not for Rufus Hound’s stand-up routine as Sancho.
His wise-cracks, enormously enjoyed by the large party of schoolchildren, were the funniest things in the show, and anyone gets my vote who can twice make the audience roar at the word “Stockholm.” (Ougadougou I could understand).
Director Angus Jackson too digs deep in his chuckle bag to find gags with which to liven up proceedings. “I loved her once,” Quixote affirms about his idealised Dulcinea. A drab peasant woman burps. “From afar.”
Threlfall, best known as Frank Gallagher in Channel 4’s Shameless, brings a lugubrious dignity to the Don, in humiliation and in a croaking, lucid, proud death-bed farewell.
There is much to enjoy in this family show, with loveable puppetry, improvised knock-about and merry tunes. But to misquote Shakespeare, the play is not the thing.
Don Quixote continues to Saturday, 21 May. Tickets 01789 403492 and online.
Colin Davison
The impoverished Don Quixote lives in La Mancha, a village where so little happens that charming a wart is recounted as an event. Disillusioned, deluded, he sets off on a quest to bring back the (illusory) age of chivalry.
The peasant Sancho Panza goes along as his ‘squire’, well aware of his master’s madness. “Still, if it makes him happy,” he explains.
The inevitable ridicule, and very occasional triumphs follow, as the haunted hero pursues his fantasies. “I can never shake the watchman off my back, the wizard off my tail,” says David Threlfall’s mournful knight in one of his few memorable lines
Fenton, a former Oxford professor of poetry, seems happiest in writing the words to the lively songs that accompany the action, but sadly most of the dialogue is as flat as the Spanish plain.
His adaptation has an end-of-the-pier quality but with a vastly superior cast, and it would be a tedious first half were it not for Rufus Hound’s stand-up routine as Sancho.
His wise-cracks, enormously enjoyed by the large party of schoolchildren, were the funniest things in the show, and anyone gets my vote who can twice make the audience roar at the word “Stockholm.” (Ougadougou I could understand).
Director Angus Jackson too digs deep in his chuckle bag to find gags with which to liven up proceedings. “I loved her once,” Quixote affirms about his idealised Dulcinea. A drab peasant woman burps. “From afar.”
Threlfall, best known as Frank Gallagher in Channel 4’s Shameless, brings a lugubrious dignity to the Don, in humiliation and in a croaking, lucid, proud death-bed farewell.
There is much to enjoy in this family show, with loveable puppetry, improvised knock-about and merry tunes. But to misquote Shakespeare, the play is not the thing.
Don Quixote continues to Saturday, 21 May. Tickets 01789 403492 and online.
Colin Davison
