Quixote rides anew with modern twists
Octavio Solis’ new work updates Cervantes classic for the Trump era
Brandishing a bedpan as a helmet and reclaimed auto parts as a coat of armor, a bedraggled “Quixote Nuevo” charges on stage at Cal Shakes atop a rickety bicycle instead of a steed.
Octavio Solis’ cheeky new re-imagining of Cervantes’ Don Quixote mythology, exuberantly directed by KJ Sanchez, throbs with wit and poignancy in its world premiere at California Shakespeare Theater in Orinda.
Letting acclaimed playwright Solis (“El Paso Blue,” “Santos and Santos”) rub elbows with Shakespeare on the docket is part of Cal Shakes’ mission to redefine
the classics in a more inclusive and relevant way that speaks to the soul and politics of life in America today.
This is Quixote (Emilio Delgado) reborn in a Trumpera Texas town, a befuddled old man with a failing memory and a fractured family. His sister (Michelle Apriña Leavy) has tended to him for years, since he was disgraced at the university where he once taught the classics. Now she’s washing her hands of him.
Slipping into dementia, he can’t tell his niece (Gianna Di Gregorio Rivera) from Dulcinea, reality from fantasy. Minutes from being checked into an assisted living facility, he is greeted by apparitions from the spirit world, a band of jaunty skeleton figures called “calacas,” who dare him to take up his sword and tilt at some windmills in the name of the oppressed. He jumps at the chance to live hard, one last time.
Delgado, a “Sesame Street” veteran, has great warmth and charm as Quixote talks an ice cream vendor (a nuanced Juan Amador) into being his Sancho
sidekick. Together they stand up for the weak and the wounded and launch an assault on the drones of the border patrol.
If the journey meanders as the sad knight wanders through the borderlands searching for his lost love, and not all of the musical moments have found their rhythm, Solis nicely contrasts the past and the present, memory and premonition. The narrative is studded with sparkling descriptions of historical icons that leap from famed bandido Tiburcio Vasquez to zoot suits and Pachucos. Lit with delicate words and phrases in Spanish, the text shimmers with an unmistakable sense of Latinx identity.
While the tartly comic drama lacks a specific sense of tragedy, such as what motivates the sister or what happened at the college, Solis, who was a consultant on the hit film “Coco,” potently conjures the mystery and shadow of the migrant existence,
hunted by La Migra and haunted by the ghosts of the fallen. Sol Castillo rivets as a battered survivor of a trek across the border, wandering lost and alone, grieving those who perished on the journey.
This is a world where ICE raids, border walls and Snapchat coexists with antiquated notions of chivalry and honor. Unlike the playwright’s earlier version of the “Quixote” legend, which premiered in Ashland in 2009, this incarnation pulses with the earthly poetry of the Southwest that suffuses much of his work. This is a Quixote who belongs to the here and now, a Quixote caught in the clash between rich and poor, the native-born and the undocumented.
The border is as much a character here as trickster spirits and tequila. Certainly no one summons the epic grandeur of the Southwest like Solis and that’s what elevates this quest into the heart of “Quixote.