Arts / Performing Arts

Don Quixote Gets a Texas Twist in Alley Theatre’s Worthy Borderlands Fantasy

Quixote Nuevo is Funny and Sad — and Ultimately Beautiful

BY // 01.24.20
photography T. Charles Erickson

Stepping into the Alley Theatre’s Hubbard space for the regional premiere of Quixote Nuevo, we find a mostly bare stage but for a set of small houses of Spanish-American influence in the distance. Yet scenic designer Takeshi Kata and lighting designer Brian J. Lilienthal’s impossible, theatrical orange sunset calls us into this imaginary Texas border town world before playwright and El Paso native Octavio Solis’s story even begins.

That constantly changing orange to pink to violent red sky blazes so deep and vivid we might believe it can only exist on stage and in our dreams. And yet, such Texas sunsets do paint the horizon in real life on occasion. We know them to be true. And this is the borderland state between reality and imagination, between theater and everyday life that Quixote Nuevo leads us through on its journey of sorrowful wonder and hilarious tragedy.

Like Cervantes’ 400-year-old masterpiece Don Quixote, this 21st century and very Texan version depicts the story of an elderly man who falls back into the romance and philosophies of an earlier age. He conjures out of imagination his own knighthood in a bid to win one last chance at a life brave and bold.

He mostly gets beat up for his troubles, but his ideals and pursuits of honorable adventures influence and inspire others to his cause.

On the Literary Road

On one level, the play become a hijinks-filled, Silver Alert road story, as former professor of literature, Jose Quijano (Sesame Street’s Emilio Delgado in a performance of a lifetime) runs away from his family. His sister, niece, priest and psychiatrist all believe he needs to go into an assisted living facility for his own health and safety. In rebellion, he declares himself a caballero and renames himself Don Quixote.

Jumping onto his loyal Rocinante, his three-wheeled bike, he sets off on a quest to right wrongs of the past and present. Followed by Papà Calaca (Hugo E. Carajal as a scary tough but not unkind avatar of Death), Quixote gets himself into a whole mess of trouble in his quest for redemption.

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Mirroring the episodic nature of the novel, this contemporary Texas twist on the stories puts the delusional Jose through a series of mundane to dangerous incidents all of which his alter ego, Quixote, sees as grand battles and heroic odysseys. Delgado’s powerful depiction of a man both knowingly deluding himself while also dueling with his mind’s illusions might make audiences question if getting lost in imagined castles is really all that bad of an alternative to some geriatric housing.

Quixote Nuevo HSC HTC Alley 9-19 092 (Photo by T. Charles Erickson)
Emilio Delgado and Hugo E. Carbajal in Quixote Nuevo. (Photo by T. Charles Erickson)

Quixote soon runs into his concerned neighbor Manny (Juan Manuel Amador) riding around with his paletero cart. Our runaway knight dubs poor Manny his squire Sancho Panza and soon beguiles him with stories of honor, riches and adventure into the job of sidekick.

Amador pulls off so much of the humor and pathos of the production I began to wonder if playwright Solis and director KJ Sanchez want us to also ponder if Quixote’s story really belongs to the knight or his squire.

Most of the rest of the chameleon-like cast dance – sometimes literally – into a multitude of roles becoming the up and low-standing citizens of the town, to figments of Jose’s memory to tormenting and consoling angels and demons who sing him on his way.

Comic Melody

KJ Sanchez, who also happens to head the MFA Playwriting and Directing program at UT, keeps a reign on the beautiful chaos and keeps the stellar cast all figuratively and physically dancing to the same, ever-changing Tejano melody.

Like the original Quixote, the comedy here reflects a merging of several separate comic languages into something new and ancient, perhaps a kind of comic Spanglish. The action and language goes from slapstick to eloquent word play in both English and Spanish, with joking juxtapositions of 400 year old literary references to riffs on social media and very current politics. What form 21st century windmill-tilting takes in this version becomes both cutting satire and a hilarious sight-gag.

The production also proves that gastro and scatological humor never goes out of style but apparently neither do gross out jokes involving ancient saint relics. Also like the novel, most of the comedy becomes heartbreaking when viewed from a slightly different angle.

Quixote Nuevo could have been a mess of a play, as it jousts with multiple genres, tones and themes. It sallies with an overabundance of issues: romance, old age, mortality, dementia, immigration and border politics. All the while the show provides meta-commentary on itself and its progenitor, the novel that changed the Western, and likely world, literature forever.

Yet somehow, perhaps directing prowess and fine acting know how, this vision of Quixote, these silly and pitiful adventures of a deluded yet magnificent knight takes us into a final sunset we know an impossible dream yet somehow so real.

Quixote Nuevo runs now through February 9 at the Alley Theatre.

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