Crazy for Cervantes

Canis Tempus puts a new twist
on an old story in Quixote

SURREAL ADVENTURER: Nachaj as Quixote

By NEIL BOYCE

On the heels of last week’s look at work arising from the John Abbott College theatre program, Andew Cuk (who teaches there) and his company Canis Tempus have brought their brand of physical, hyper-expressive theatre to a new production, Quixote.

Written and directed by Cuk, it’s an abstract look at Cervante’s most famous creation, a springboard from which director and actors launch in all directions concerning the windmill-tilting knight, his faithful companion, and their adventures together.

Cuk’s ambitious, multilingual abstraction of the Quixote legend is a disjointed affair combining movement, effects, masks and music in a series of scenes so moody they often drift into nothingness. Still, one has to admire the freedom the company felt in trying everything as they explored the possibilities of the iconic story.

Veering crazily between a performance and a doctoral thesis on the nature of “Quixote-ness,” there is a kitchen sink approach in leaving nothing out. Borges and Foucault are mentioned at one point, as is Wishbone the talking dog (including his adventure, The Im-paws-ible Dream). An ape puts on a marionette show with tiny puppets doing karaoke. There’s a fencing duel, an especially nasty book reviewer, and the recurring appearance of two mortarboard and gown-clad Academics, who comment on the story, author and main character—whom they describe as a withdrawn, sexually repressed paranoiac.

The characters surrounding Quixote shift and meld as costumes are changed on stage and actors perform multiple roles, or the same role. Ashley Dunn and Anne-Marie Saheb switch rapidly from knight to demon to courtier, giving the impression of a far larger cast than just four actors.

Inside the Portuguese Association—a beat-up venue to match the shambling story—we’re above the stage on a three-sided balcony, craning necks as we peer down at the actors, the stage banked on one side by sharp-angled scaffolding and crossed by a footbridge littered with books. A large roll of paper is unspooled, on which a character sprawls and takes notes.

Peter Alec Fedun’s sound design was an entertaining old-time radio assortment of live effects featuring gongs, a music-box, sheet-metal thunder, and—nice touch—a vinyl recording of the Man of la Mancha soundtrack blaring out from a cheap record player.

Isabelle Boudreau’s fantastic costumes and masks helped keep the surrealism aloft, while designer Peter Vatsis produced an arresting moment with the appearance of Quixote’s metal and wire sculpted horse Rocinante.

Chris Wilding was good in several roles, clicking as the buffoonish Sancho Panza, where he happily strayed at times into confused and hapless Fawlty Towers Miguel territory.

Chris Nachaj was effective as a weary Don Quixote, alternating between heroic madness and despair, calming his bewildered companion with, “It is easy to see you are not used to this business of adventure, Sancho.”

Tighter control is needed over this hijinks-filled production. And, there was no compelling reason for the overhead seating, which distanced us from the action instead of immersing us in the fantasy world.

That said, Quixote is worth experiencing—and in a word I wouldn’t normally use in writing about theatre, the show was mental.