‘Don Quijote’: Cervantes at Work

With “The Adventures of Don Quijote de La Mancha,” Will & Company takes us behind the scenes of Cervantes’ classic novel.

Writer-director Colin Cox has attempted a wry deconstruction of the book. The action begins on an upper tier at the Los Angeles Theatre Center, where Cervantes (Ruben Garfias) is shown imprisoned in a dank cell, supposedly for embezzling royal tax revenues.

The author is at work on the manuscript that will become his masterpiece, episodes of which then unfold on the stage below. Misguided knight-errant Quijote (Gregg Daniel) retains his habit of mistaking windmills for monsters and sheep for enemy armies, all under the skeptical gaze of sidekick Sancho Panza (Fran de Leon).

The show toys with the links between serendipity and creativity--one funny bit imagines Cervantes accidentally deriving his hero’s name by sneezing and coughing. But Cox’s points about the creative process remain too opaque to satisfy.

What emerges instead is some fitfully amusing slapstick played out by the appropriately irrepressible Daniel and an energetic nine-member ensemble. The viewer’s enthusiasm, alas, flags long before their’s does.

* “The Adventures of Don Quijote de La Mancha,” Los Angeles Theatre Center, Theater 4, 514 S. Spring St., Los Angeles. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m., Sundays, 3 p.m. Ends Dec. 17. $12. (213) 485-1681. Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes.