Man of La Mancha at SecondStory Rep

I’m looking forward to seeing Man of La Mancha at SecondStoryRep. 

Man of La Mancha is the story of Don Quixote, and of author Miguel de Cervantes. If you’re familiar with Don Quixote, you probably know him as a hopeless dreamer, or a would-be knight errant, or possibly as an old man with dissociative episodes. His most iconic misadventure is his fight against windmills, which he believes are giants. But even though Quixote doesn’t operate in quite the same reality as the people around him, his vision of the world offers nobility to the lowly, love to the unlovable, and hope to the hopeless. By the end of the story, the audience has to ask itself whether the optimism of Quixote’s perspective might be worth the self-deceit of his dreaming after all. We have to ask whether his dream is any kind of deceit at all, or whether believing in it might bring us closer to the world we want, and help us to change the world as it is. I’m personally invested in Don Quixote, and even managed to squeeze some discussion about the novel into my dissertation.

If you watch Grace and Frankie on Netflix, you’ll be familiar with some of the music from Man of La Mancha, even if you’re not aware of it. In the most recent season Robert, the character played by Martin Sheen, aspires to play the role of Don Quixote, and we see him sing the beautiful “Impossible Dream” – a piece of music that is gorgeous on its own, and tells us so much about the character who sings it.

SecondStoryRep is a great little eastside theater, and I’ve seen some good shows there. They’re located in Redmond Town Center. Tickets for Man of La Mancha can be found here.