Age recommendation: This down-to-earth adaptation is more faithful to the novel than the popular musical Man of La Mancha — less sentimental, more challenging and more ambiguous. The play contains some bawdy language and occasional mild profanity.

Please note: Children under 6 are not admitted to plays or other events.

e-Luminations: Octavio Solis
Click here to read an excerpt from Illuminations, OSF's 64-page guide to the plays.

Videos:
The adaptation (5:52)
More about the project (5:53)
Whose story is this? (9:09)
The production (4:03)

Synopsis: Alonso Quijano is a middle-aged country gentleman in La Mancha, Spain. One day, under the influence of reading countless tales of knight-errantry, Quijano sets off seeking adventures of his own, armed with an old lance, some tattered armor, and a new name, Don Quixote. Concerned, his niece and housekeeper invite the local priest and barber to torch the old man’s library of chivalric literature.

Quixote rides to the local inn, imagining it’s a castle and that the innkeeper is a lord with the authority to bestow knighthood. The innkeeper humors his fancy, and Quixote invokes the lady for whom he will pursue his knightly errands, Dulcinea del Toboso.

Quixote’s first venture—intervening in a dispute between a shepherd and his master—ends with him knocked senseless and howling in pain. A peasant neighbor, Sancho Panza, comes by to help, and Quixote persuades Panza to join him as his squire by promising him an island.

In a parallel story, we meet two young lovers, Cardenio and Lucinda. He has been called away to serve a duke, Fernando, but vows to return and marry her. In subsequent scenes, Fernando learns about Lucinda from the lovesick Cardenio and, coveting her, secretly woos her for himself.

Meanwhile, back at home, Quixote’s niece and housekeeper receive a report of his whereabouts from a traveler, and the fiery Juana Panza bursts in seeking her missing husband.

With Panza, Quixote embarks on a series of mistaken adventures: a duel with windmills that Quixote perceives as giants; a battle over a carriage Quixote assumes contains a hostage; an impulsive freeing of convicts from a traveling chain gang. These mishaps climax back at the inn, where Quixote fails to pay the bill and Panza is punished: He’s bounced like a rag doll in a stretched blanket.

In Act II, a narrator begs our indulgence for the play’s deficiencies, as it comes from an unreliable Arab historian named Cide Hamete Benengeli.

Cardenio meets Lucinda on the eve of her wedding to Fernando and demonstrates how Fernando lied and connived to win her hand. She vows to kill herself on the altar rather than marry Fernando.

Meanwhile, the barber and the priest from La Mancha, trailing Quixote, encounter a young country girl, Dorotea. She reveals that she seeks her beloved, Fernando, who seduced her before falling for Lucinda.

Quixote and Panza encounter Cardenio, now a ragged mountain madman mourning his lost love. Inspired by Cardenio’s tatters, Quixote strips off his armor and self-prescribes a similar penance for love of Dulcinea.

The barber and the priest find Panza and Quixote, luring them back to the inn by telling them a princess has called for their services. Cardenio joins them when he learns that Lucinda, instead of killing herself at the altar, fainted instead.

At the inn, Fernando and Lucinda are reunited with Dorotea and Cardenio, respectively. And the assembled group, conspiring to coax Quixote home at last, pretend to honor him with a parade. In his eyes, then, Quixote rides home in triumph. —Rob Weinert-Kendt