Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Stephen Harper, Merce Ribot, Patricia Rodriguez, Maria Camahort.

To anyone who has ever taken the time to read arguably one of the great novels, The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha or have even spent time in the beautiful medieval part of the city of Alcalá de Henares and looked upon Cervantes’ birthplace, then it is to know history. You can only ever wonder just what would make anybody want to even attempt to take it on a theatre piece; you would have to be as mad surely as Don Quixote himself to even try it.

However artistic company Little Soldier have quite the talent and it is with no surprise that their version of The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha is…as ingenious as the man himself.

The sound of a gentle guitar playing sweet gentle Spanish music fills the Unity Theatre as the audience is taken through some of the chapters in the life and adventures of Don Quixote and his squire Pancho       . This though is no ordinary setting, this is no ordinary story, for the tale of a madman, a dreamer, is never that ordinary.

The three acting members of the cast, Stephen Harper, Merce Ribot, Patricia Rodriguez, played out with some great originality and serious resourcefulness some of the moments from the book and having by the look of it enormous fun into the bargain. Ingenuity will only ever get you so far, it takes more than the appearance of either a chivalric knight or a good actor to play the part, it also takes a true desire to produce something very memorable, something even bordering on the utterly mad itself to be considered a joy.

From the inventive use of a scripted question/answer session at the beginning, through some great work especially by the female members of the company, The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote Of La Mancha is a play of some note, supremely inventive and performed with skill.

What Cervantes would have made of it, who knows or even actually cares but for those in the audience of the Unity Theatre, nobody was left without a broad smile on their faces nor the thought of having seen innovative theatre far from their minds. A great job by a very new theatre company!

The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote Of La Mancha is being performed at The Monkey House, Zoo Venues, during the Edinburgh Fringe.

Ian D. Hall