◎Without saying
The day of the Beijing premiere of the 10th anniversary commemorative edition of the Chinese premiere of the musical "I, Don Quixote" is also the time when the Shanghai Theater is suspended, and entering the theater at this moment more clearly produces a sense of presence, which is related to the confirmation of identity, and is a joint confirmation with the people in the play, with the creator, and with the audience. In the face of "the return of the old church, is the world more sober, or more crazy?" Such a slogan, reality seems to have given a clear answer. For the viewer, in addition to seeing a lot of unchanging and still moving idealistic feelings, he also sees a lot of more complex semantics chewed out under the stirring of the real context.
In the 1950s, the original author of the musical, Dale Wasserman, set the tone when he set the tone when he set out to work on an adaptation of Don Quixote, arguing that the structure of the novel was clear: the story of a delusional old man who always saw one thing as something else, and he found the shadow of the author Cervantes in it. Also from the bottom, he devoted himself to the army, even if his fate was uncertain, he did not lose his optimistic and upright chivalry. So he decided to merge the two, writing a story of Cervantes and his Don Quixote, "expressing his spirit in the literary characters created by Cervantes—his courage, his humor, and his belief that fantasy is the basis of life."
This form of play-within-a-play has a long history. Shakespeare, before Cervantes, had already skillfully applied it to his creations—constructing a parallel world for the characters, in which they conveyed the characters' intentions, advanced the dramatic progression of the story, and imaginatively solved real-life problems: in Hamlet, the prince wrote and directed a "mousetrap" play-in-the-air play in front of the imperial court, which was a "mechanism" to test his uncle and mother, to prove their crimes from their anger and trepidation; in "A Midsummer Night's Dream", the duke and his wife became the fairy queen of the forest, Borrowing the crazy dream of sprinkling love juice to reorganize the athenian order in reality, the narrative is also advanced in the switch between reality and dream. Although there is no "play-in-play" in the strict sense of "Don Quixote", the protagonist is sometimes sober, sometimes crazy, sometimes the noble Alonso Quehana, and sometimes his fantasy ranger Don Quixote Knight, and the identity of the change also forms an intertextual similar to the effect of the play-in-play.
This is the more favored form of play-in-play in Shakespeare's time, it is inward-looking, it belongs to the person in the play, and Waltherman's nested play-within-a-play in "I, Don Quixote" is the intertextuality between the author and his character, which is also the more conscious form of relationship used by modern and contemporary playwrights - we will realize and indicate today that Mozart is Don Juan, Cervantes is Don Quixote, and the advantage of this more reference to external texts is that the semantic meaning of the text extends outward like ripples. Consider Watherman's endorsement of the Cervantes/Don Quixote spirit, and from this line in the script we may understand his tribute—
Duke: Why do you poets like madmen so much?
Cervantes: Probably because... We're too much alike.
Duke: None of you will face reality.
Cervantes: We all choose the parts of reality that make us happy.
Wartherman's intention for "I, Don Quixote" was so clear and firm: acura rather than entertainment gave the musical, born in 1965, a unique temperament, and the young lyricist Joe Darion was fully faithful to the original, and almost all the lyrics were directly expanded from the theatrical text, which was still a pioneering achievement at the time. At a glance, Deluang realized that "The Impossible Dream" was the key word in the whole play, "the key point for the audience to go from joke to empathy for this character", so he expanded around this. Incidentally, the only new song in the play, "Bird Flying", was inspired by a stage description, the melody is brisk, and it is a good outline of the wandering and cheerful temperament of the mules at the bottom. Composer Mitch Leigh has adopted a temperamentally free-spirited flamenco style that was not mainstream in Spain in the 16th century at the time of the story; "A Dream That Won't Come True" is naturally that classic song, and this time the 10th anniversary edition of "I, Don Quixote" also aired versions sung by artists from around the world, from pop singer Jennifer Houston to Broadway actor Josh Groban, from the French drama "Old Flight" Laurent Lee. Class to Chinese musical theater actor Zheng Yunlong... You know how widely it's sung.
Of course, let's talk about production. As a newcomer to the theater 10 years ago, I happened to encounter the English version of "I, Don Quixote" staged in the Trojan Theater that no longer exists, when director Joseph was still playing Don Quixote on stage, I squinted at the vague vertical screen subtitle strip, "To reach the unreachable star" is very appropriate in a simple and dark environment. After Chinese 10 years of the musical theater market from scratch, "I, Don Quixote" upgraded the production of the grand theater, the real scene of the dungeon and the ladder, with the elaborate costumes of the old craftsmanship; one of the casts, Liu Yang, who played Don Quixote, and Bian Jiaping, who played Sancho, were both the premiere of the 2015 Chinese version of The Card Division, and the progress of the role grasp was obvious to all; the Chinese translation used half text and half white to match the plain vernacular of Cervantes and the crepe of Don Quixote's crepe in ancient English, and the rhyme was also very exquisite.
"He is either the wisest madman in the world or the craziest wise man." What is the heterogeneity of "I, Don Quixote" is not from the anachronism that idealism always has in the real world, but from whether the ideals and wisdom that idealists praise are really flawless and can stand up to scrutiny. In fact, judging from the trailer produced in this version, Altonsha's perspective has been vaguely mentioned, but I think it is not enough. Don Quixote's death does not recognize Altonsha as Altonsha, and until death hopes that Altosha will accept his new identity as Dursinea, which is very problematic - it should be Don Quixote who recognizes Altosha's identity, acknowledges the low status, and does not hinder the nobility and freedom of the soul.
Moving forward in the times, "I, Don Quixote" may have reached the time when it is time to subvert, which is worthy of the greatness of a good work. In the next 10 years, hopefully, "I, Don Quixote" will still be there, proving the idealism that is still being praised, and in the next 10 years, Don Quixote should also realize that the tipping point between sobriety and madness can move forward one inch, that is, to recognize that reality can still run to the idealism that can still be loved.