When one cast member shouts down to the stage from a balcony, "Is this like that musical Man of La Mancha?", Kate Benson, as Cervantes' modern-day translator Edith, responds wryly, "No, a little different." She's not kidding.
Directed by New York-based up-and-comer Lear deBessonet and written by the similarly rising Lucy Thurber, Quixote is stuffed with a cast of 30 mixed professionals and amateurs; the Psalters, a nine-piece anarchist-gypsy-Christian-punk band (picture Gogol Bordello minus the bordello) perched above the audience; Cervantes (Gian Murray Gianino) and Edith canoodling in a corner; and former Mum Puppettheatre artistic director Robert Smythe pedaling an oversize tricycle as Rocinante, Quixote's horse.
As if all that commotion didn't make enough of a joyful noise, deBessonet takes the term site-specific to a whole new level. Quixote isn't just in a church - Broad Street Ministries, some of whose homeless congregants appear in the production - it is church. The moment when Quixote (David Brooks, who makes up for his youthfulness with a goggle-eyed fervor befitting the crazed Don) first takes up his sword to defend the defenseless, Psalters howling amid a percussive frenzy, dancers whirling around him like Turkish dervishes, the play explodes with power. It's the kind of transcendental religious experience that calls the lost back home, or to Jim Jones, or to holy war. Just be glad those strumming, squeezing, plucking, and pounding anarcho-gypsies are committed to the good fight.
However, deBessonet subsequently has trouble matching the unified spirit of Quixote's transformation. Elements of the production are superb. DeBessonet and set designer Peter Ksander put the room to work - all six alcoves divided by a balcony level, three on top, three below. Each curtained alcove depicts a violent act; by opening them to reveal individual tableaux, or covering them to reveal actors' shadows, they recall the horror of artist Kara Walker's racially charged cut-paper silhouettes. Conversely, Smythe's twitchy-eared, inquisitive Rocinante - essentially, a horse's blue puppet head attached to the trike's front with Smythe behind - adds a sweet shot of visual whimsy.
But Thurber's script, deceptively simple, is diluted by the inclusion of several church members' self-written monologues. Independently, they're moving (one woman recalls a troubled love affair: "He says my name/ like he's kissing it/ in his mouth."), but here they stand out like a tacked-on obligation. And Dulcinea? Her contrived appearance as a dying peasant plays like an afterthought.
There's also the matter of giving 30 people enough to do, and occasionally, deBessonet just lets the Psalters have their way with a tune while the cast runs around Rocinante, Quixote, and Sancho (James Scruggs as Quixote's faithful servant). Still, with deBessonet preaching this message of compassion, it's worth taking a seat - bolstered as it is by compelling images and hypnotic beats - in her choir.
Through June 7 at Broad Street Ministry, 315 S. Broad St. Tickets: $15. 1-800-838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com/event/64119 or e-mail info@broadstreetministry.com.
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