The Fifth Avenue Theatre, 2016

Composer: Mitch Leigh

Lyrics: Joe Darion

Book: Dale Wasserman

Director: Allison Narver

Costumes: Harmony Arnold

Lights: L.B. Morse

"It is a striking visual that greets theatergoers filing into the 5th Avenue Theatre for its current production of Man of La Mancha. An impassable, impossibly tall fence stretches across the width of the proscenium, lined at the top with concertina wire, backed by concrete walls that reach for the ceiling. It is a brutal, cold, and dark setting for the theater’s reimagining of the 1964 musical inspired by the 1605 novel Don Quixote de La Manche and its author Miguel de Cervantes—one that invites contemplation in a moment when prison reform is a hot topic, as is President Obama’s failure to shutter the Guantanamo Bay detention center.

While the script is unchanged from the original, the modern trappings of this staging extend beyond the concertina wire and concrete that introduce Matthew Smucker’s smart set. The guards are gun-wielding fascist thugs, the machinations of the prison industrial, and the prisoners adorned in the denim and leather of a biker gang. These modern touches, though, are secondary. Once Cervantes’ play within a play begins, brutal reality recedes into the background and gives way to an imaginative staging." - Seattle Weekly