The Man From La Mancha -- Episode 2 (part 2 of 3)

Theater History and Mysteries

This is the story of how one of the greatest books ever written, Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes, became one of the most successful musicals in broadway history, which of course was The Man from La Mancha by Dale Wasserman.
The year is 1579, and a solider being held in an Algerian prison, and he’s about to make his 4th, and failed, attempt to escape. And this is only one of a multitude of life mishaps that makes it very unlikely the solider even survived. And it wasn’t until the age of 58 that the solider, then prisoner, then tax collector, would write the world’s first novel.

What utterly impossible set of circumstances had to happen for this prisoner to even get out of prison, much less become one of the greatest writers of all time.

Flash forward 350 years to the mid-1960s where a playwright is looking to convert a stage play into a musical, he has an acquaintance who is a psychic, so the writer asks whether the musical will be a successful endeavor. The psychic predicts not only that it will, and will soon overwhelm the writer’s life.

Both predictions are entirely accurate.

This is a 3 part dive into Don Quixote. In part 1 we looked at the impact of the book and what made it so important. Take home points are that it is a really big deal, and it had a lot of important ideas wrapped around a really funny and accessible story.

In this part we’ll look at the star-crossed life of Cervantes, including the ominous predictions surrounding 1588, his deeply ironic relationship with the greatest playwright of his day, and try to answer the question of how someone with his life could possibly write comedy.

In part 3 we’ll ask how that narrative, 350 years later, get translated into one of the most successful musicals in broadway history?

What series of impossible and unlikely events had to happen for the world to inherit Don Quixote?