Man of La Mancha #1
Man of La Mancha
OPENING: November 22, 1965
CLOSING: June 26, 1971
Seen: June 1968
LOCATION: Martin Beck
Anyone who’s ever spent any kind of quality time with my dad knows that patience is not his strong suit. In all honesty, now that I am an adult, this makes sense to me. He was the youngest in a well off family and he always had to yell to be heard and to get his point across. He was never the type to reread books or movies because he wanted to experience something he hadn’t already. So for him to have a piece of theatre – and a musical, at that – he craved to see multiple times, it goes without saying that he loves it.
Theatre Kids, there are two shows that I can unquestionably give this honor to. (Oliver! Is a close third, but it doesn’t quite reach the same reverence of the other two.) We have reached the part of our programming where we discuss the first of these shows. And that show, my friends, is Man of La Mancha.
Man of La Mancha is the musical theatre adaptation of Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote. Often considered the world’s first novel, it is a huge tome following the misadventures of the addled Alonso Quijana, an old scholar who in a possible fit of dementia decides he is a valiant knight by the name of Don Quixote. The idea to bring Don Quixote to the musical theater stage – it had already been adapted into an opera – came about after it was presented by CBS’s Dupont Show of the Month. When it brought in a surprisingly large audience, screenwriter Joe Wasserman was asked to turn his piece into a musical for the stage.
The journey to the stage wasn’t easy. To start with, the source novel has over four hundred characters. This would prove to be the easy part, as the storyline Wasserman used for the TV broadcast was adequate for the stage. But even with the extremely cherry-picked version of the story, there was no way to eliminate the fact that the overall storyline had an underlayer of sadness due to the extremely brutal time period that the piece was set in. (Afterall – no one expects the Spanish Inquisition.) To add insult to injury, the original lyricist had to be replaced when he took too poetic of an approach to the project for Wasserman’s liking.
In addition to the already problematic themes of the material, casting the role of Don Quixote/Quijana/de Cervantes became a problem. Since Man of La Mancha was requisitioned with no producer attached, it was left to the same process that those of us writers without a smash hit are quite accustomed to – shopping the piece around in hopes that someone picked it up. One tactic that still is in use today is to attach a name star to the project to attract potential buyers. This was the path that the creative team decided to attempt, as La Mancha was an extremely experimental piece by 1965 standards and could really benefit from name recognition. But even this proved challenging. Rex Harrison was attached until he was informed that he wouldn’t be able to sing-talk the songs as he had done with My Fair Lady. Michael Redgrave and several other name stars were approached but weren’t interested. Finally, stage veteran Richard Kiley, who was very well known within theater circles but not so much outside of them, accepted the role.
Finally, the team had a project that they were ready to shop around. They had a one act musical with themes so much rougher than audiences of the 1960s were used to. And it almost wasn’t even produced. The quest to find and producer and a venue proved labor some and nearly impossible. But shortly before their resources were depleted, Goodspeed Opera House in East Haddam, CT swept in. They were a brand new regional theater company looking for something new and edgy to start their third summer season and decided that Man of La Mancha was just what they needed.
The show blew up at Goodspeed. So much so that in November of that same year, they had the funding to move to what they thought was an Off-Broadway house in Greenwich Village called The ANTA, which had just been vacated by Lincoln Center. The ANTA had been quickly constructed to house Lincoln Center productions while their Broadway house, the Vivian Beaumont, was under construction.
And then...the impossible happened. The ANTA was a good forty blocks away from Times Square, but due to updated Broadway seating rules...it was deemed a Broadway theater after La Mancha had booked the space but before opening night. This meant that the little show that almost didn’t even get a showing anywhere opened on Broadway on November 22, 1965. The reaction to it was immediate and incredible. The creative team could not have expected their tiny little passion project to blow up the way that it did. It’s success was astounding.
But looking back now, is it truly surprising that Man of La Mancha was a break out hit? It’s not a show that sugarcoats the time period in which it is set and there is nothing about the Spanish Inquisition that can be considered “Easy Living”. It even goes so far as to depict the beginning of a gang rape on stage. But despite all of this, the underlying theme of the show is unwavering hope. As a writer, I have always believed that infusing comedy into a tragic piece that much more tragic; a part of me wonders if the creative team had the same thought process. This would explain why the tour de force song in the show, The Impossible Dream, is so insanely powerful in the context of the show. It is considered the last Broadway number to become a mainstream number (Bordman, 1971) and has been covered by many prominent singers. The song is about maintaining hope when you have none and this was particularly poignant to audiences of the mid to late sixties, when tensions and fears from both the cold war and Vietnam were high.
So maybe Richard Kiley wasn’t the top choice. Maybe ANTA was sold to NYU and slated for demolition near the beginning of Man of La Mancha’s run (In the true sense of sticking with a theme, by the end of it’s run in 1971, it had played four houses, the third of which was Off-Broadway.). But the legacy lives on. It is my personal opinion that Rex Harrison made the correct call. He just did not have the vocal chops for The Impossible Dream and Kiley was able to give it a personal touch that I don’t believe I have heard in any other singer’s version. The original run, the New York run that almost didn’t even make Regional, took home five Tonys, including Best Musical and Best Actor for Kiley. La Mancha and Mame dominated the musical categories in 1966, only relinquishing Best Choreography to Bob Fosse for Sweet Charity.
My dad saw La Mancha in June of 1968, long after Kiley left the production. But the effect was there; Dad bought the album shortly after he saw it and thirty years later, The Impossible Dream was one of the theme songs of my childhood. My dad will always cherish what he considers a masterpiece.
I really can’t say I blame him.
CAST: REPLACEMENT
DON QUIXOTE (CERVANTES): David Atkinson
SANCHO: Eddie Roll
ALDONZA: Bernice Massi
ALDONZA (WED & SAT MATINEE): Carolyn Maye
THE INNKEEPER: Ray Middleton
THE PADRE: Robert Rounseville
DR CARASCO: Laurence Guittard
ANTONIA: Dianne Barton
THE BARBER: Howard Girven
PEDRO, HEAD MULETEER: Shev Rodgers
ANSELMO, A MULETEER: Ted Forlow
THE HOUSEKEEPER: Eleanore Knapp
JOSE, A MULETEER: Will Carter
JUAN, A MULETEER: John Aristides
PACO, A MULETEER: Bill Stanton
TENORIO, A MULETEER: Carlos Macri
THE HORSES: Bill Stanton, Will Carter
MARIA, THE INNKEEPER’S WIFE: Rita Metzger
FERMINA, A SLAVERY, AND MOORISH DANCER: Marcia Gilford
CAPTAIN OF THE INQUISITION: Renato Cibelli
GUITARIST: Stephen Sahlein
GUARDS AND MEN OF THE INQUISITION: Ray Dash, Jonathan Fox, Charles Leipart, John Fields
UNDERSTUDIES: Laurence Guittard (Don Quixote); Renato Cibelli (Don Quixote, Innkeeper, Pedro, Dr Carasco); Louis Criscuola (Sancho, The Padre, The Barber); Marcia Gilford (Aldonza, Antonia); Ralph Farnworth (The Padre); Alfred Leberfeld (Dr. Carasco); Ted Forlow (The Barber); Janet Gaylord (Antonia, Maria, Fermina); Rita Metzger (The Housekeeper); Ray Dash (Captain of the Inquisition).
A Noise Within. “History of Man of La Mancha” Anoisewithin.org. 2016-2017. https://www.anoisewithin.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/History-of-Man-of-La-Mancha.pdf?fbclid=IwAR0omr6kMiFjvqh8jwgBoyLNwhb0kqQFwdx7XwsyX8cHkTxPG-ujGkqOLsI
Bordman, Gerald. “American Musical Theatre: A Chronicle.” New York: Oxford University Press, Inc., 1978.
Calta, Louis. “The ANTA Theater is Coming Down; N.Y.U To Build New School of Commerce On Site.” New York Times, October 28, 1967. https://www.nytimes.com/1967/10/28/archives/the-anta-theater-is-coming-down-nyu-to-build-new-school-of-commerce.html?searchResultPosition=1&fbclid=IwAR2ODYBH2kpeF2X2w18858uqRWVF04Oko-mG9L_ZY6jP7VvAHZPO2R_rdv0
Goodspeed Opera House. www.goodspeed.org. Accessed December 2022.
Miller, Scott. “Inside Man of La Mancha”. Barrington Stage Company. Accessed December 2022. https://barringtonstageco.org/behind-the-story-man-of-la-mancha/?fbclid=IwAR0-xSIJsjzysl_5unGAp32b-_GN2kAgbIYgRlODqfUr1V4ZzjNCh0nq0sc
Taubman, Howard. “Theater: Don Quixote, Singing Knight; ‘Man of La Mancha’ Has Kiley In Title Role”. New York Times, November 23, 1965. https://www.nytimes.com/1965/11/23/archives/theater-don-quixote-singing-knight-man-of-la-mancha-has-kiley-in.html?searchResultPosition=8&fbclid=IwAR1s_JeKRhyucEpm_tbyb_ZWGSE05vvWQtfK8iZ5W5rbaOfsCuW8J0BtpDk
Tony Awards. www.tonyawards.com. Accessed December 2022.
