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Volume CXXXIII, Number 14 |
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One-man show proves Don Quixote a story for our times
JONATHAN PEREZ
STAFF WRITER
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| Jacques Bourgaux performs in his one-man version of Don Quixote last Thursday in Pickard Theater. (Jennifer Lee, Bowdoin Orient) |
Before Sancho Panza runs for shelter from the deluge in La Mancha, before Don Quixote envisions his love for the metaphysical Dulcinea, and before the cascading cries of "war" and "the next adventure," there is but one man. And like the honorable Don Quixote, himself, Jacques Bougaux creates a world in his mind.
Bougaux's one-man show opens to an informal setting with Bougaux strolling across center stage. Carrying an old leather water pouch, the Parisian actor turns to the audience asking, "What do you think of this? It makes it more authentic, no?" The actor proceeds to squirt water from the pouch and, with a quenching swig, casts his emphatic vote for the inclusion of the prop.
What follows is a rather offsetting line of rhetorical questions thrown out to a transfixed audience concerning prior knowledge of the play: "You have read the whole book, no? A chapter then? The forward? Perhaps just the pictures?"
Immediately Mr. Bougaux casts his audience into an uncertain relationship with the empty stage. The theater participates in ecstatic and crucial ways. Throughout the chaotic hour and a half, unseen bursts of laughter are tempered only by a silence brought on by Miguel Cervantes' relentless allusions to an oppressive Spanish regime. This is just one aspect of Bougaux's far-reaching and deeply affective persona.
The play opens to a Spanish market busy with the cries of self-promoting vendors: "Naranjas, naranjas! Manzana, manzana, chorizo!" A boy steals an apple as a pyramid of produce falls to the ground.
The phenomenon of Bougaux's voice paints an elaborate setting, which includes groaning machines, clopping horse hoofs, and a variety of everyday greetings identifiable only by the actor's nonchalant voice.
But perhaps most impressive of all is Bougaux's precise rendition of the much-coveted-yet-never-fully-realized Iberian lisp.
Before we meet the odd pairing of Roman stoicism and pastoral naivet‚ known as Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, Bougaux reenacts the capture of the novelist, playwright, and poet Miguel de Cervantes. Fulfilling common lore, Bougaux depicts a downtrodden Miguel de Cervantes thrust into a prison most likely in Argamasilla, La Mancha.
Echoes of water drip from an unseen corner of the cell, daylight and cosmopolitan sounds eek through a tiny window porthole as hefty guards pass the acclaimed poet without paying heed. A voice from a near cell previews that of Sancho Panza. The pair of unfortunate victims break into a rendition of a Spanish folk song as stage lights increase and we are transported to the harsh environs of La Mancha.
Wildly following his delusional adventures through the Spanish countryside, Don Quixote rides his horse Rocinante with bravado and an air of self-respect. Next to him is the generous peasant Sancho Panza who retains fidelity to his master's overtly mad plans. Bougaux switches between the two characters with a manic ease, at once affecting binaries of tonality and inflection.
Don Quixote's journey includes a delusional attack on a flock of sheep, a galloping lance-thrust through some windmills mistaken for giants, and, of course, his most revered adventure in the pursuit of Dulcinea-the unseen passion which burns even in his most downtrodden state, carrying this desperate hero through further comic devastation.
On the contrary, the simple and rustic Sancho Panza follows false promises of one day obtaining an island: a hallucination based in social commentary about the oppressive politics of the immutable 17th Century Spanish aristocracy. Though in the end, it is the political claims of "war" and ominous background vociferations of the Spanish Inquisition that ultimately resonate with modern audiences.
In a final night scene (as indicated by Bougaux's rich owl hooting and fluffing of wings), a procession of Christians appear in self-flagellation, alternating between whipping and the kind of biblical head-banging once typified by the comic genius of Monty Python. Another attack ensues-once more without the questionable strength of Sancho Panza-as Don Quixote ultimately accepts the Catholic crusaders as his own.
The following scene displays a setting of joy and dancing, drinks and carousing, where Sancho Panza and Don Quixote blindly follow the crowd. As in the whole play, the scene exposes blurred distinctions between comedy and tragedy, where ideals meet failure and codes of honor cannot hurdle materialistic poverty.
Indeed, the entire play reveals a world turned on its own head, where old and new social forms struggle to coexist. At a moment in history where the echoes of an imperialistic regime loom in the after-effects of war, the wellspring of energy and creative willpower that Bougaux brings to the stage should not pass unrecognized. The play itself seems to be a call, if not an answer to the role an artist should play in society, at a point in history.
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