The New Adventures of Don Quixote

Book excerpt: Tariq Ali’s latest play, The New Adventures of Don Quixote, can be read as a homage to Brecht. It is a blend of past and present—as the echoes of history refuse to fade away. The balance of good and bad in the world today indicates that the latter is by far the heavier. As Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, mounted on their beasts of burden, Rocinante and the Mule, ride into the twenty-first century, they are confronted by old vices familiar to them: war, greed, ethnic and religious prejudices, disappointed love, economic crisis. The mode is satirical, sometimes viciously so. The songs are sad and angry. But there are odd moments of happiness for Quixote, when he imagines that a wounded woman US colonel is Dulcinea and allows himself to be seduced by her in a military hospital in Germany. Primarily interested in discovering the meaning of life and how it is moulded by the world in which we live, Ali’s theatrical device in this play is the conversation between the two animals—Rocinante the philosopher and Mule the everyman who questions her relentlessly. Accompanied by numerous colour performance stills of the play from its 2013 production in Germany, this volume is as intellectually stimulating as it is uproariously humorous.