THE Rep’s big community musical is back — but this show, in contrast to its two successful predecessors Wallop Mrs Cox and Ridin’ the No 8, both tales of Brummie life, has a more exotic setting.
Written and directed by Chris Bond, with music by Jo Collins, it is inspired by the epic Cervantes novel Don Quixote de la Mancha.
The three lead roles are taken by professional actors — Matthew Kelly as the dreamer knight, George Costigan as his trusty squire Sancho Panza, and David Fielder as Tomás de Torquemada, who was Queen Isabella’s Grand Inquisitor. The rest of the cast of 70 is made up of talented and committed local people, and members of the Shysters, a Coventry-based theatre company for actors with learning disabilities.
The ensemble is impressively polished; but the show is a cheerful hotchpotch that only gets away with its joltingly uneven tone, tacked-on contemporary politics and abundance of toe-curlingly bad gags thanks to its inherent good nature.
It begins with Queen Isabella stiffening the resolve of the Inquisition: “Spain for the Spanish by ethnic cleansing!” Overemphatic attempts at topicality abound; the Moors clash with the Catholics and Isabella pays anachronistic homage to the new Pope Benedict XVI.
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These weighty themes sit ill with the musical’s general larkiness. Jokes are cracked even while Quixote, branded a heretic, is being tortured by Fielder’s two-dimensional villain; sinister priests intone in Latin but break off to point to their cowls and demand “Respect to the hoodies!” Any potential dramatic tension is killed before it can build.
Yet the production has its charms, notably Kelly’s ruddy-faced, big-hearted, poignantly knock-kneed knight. In a nicely inventive touch, he and Costigan’s warm, though hectoring, Sancho ride on rough-hewn wooden tricycle steeds, and when Kelly does battle with a windmill, he becomes comically airborne on its sails.
Collins’s score is jaunty with an enjoyable cod flamenco flavour. Kelly’s doesn’t sing solo, but Costigan throws himself into his numbers with brio, despite his vocal limitations.
The best moments, though, are when the entire company is in full voice, supplying a lush depth of sound and feeling that has as much to do with passion as with musical ability. This show is a group effort; and it’s an effort worth applauding.
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