ROYAL LYCEUM THEATRE
EDINBURGH
***

One wonders what the poet W H Auden, the original lyricist of Dale Wasserman's 1965 musical, would've made of this Spanish Inquisition-set play within a play. In having an incarcerated Cervantes attempt to save his skin (and his unpublished manuscript) by acting out Don Quixote's hapless adventures in a world gone mad, Auden's approach might have been somewhat darker than Joe Darion's, who got the gig with composer Mitch Leigh after Auden had, somewhat ironically, been taken off the project.

As it is, much of Martin Duncan's boutique revival is an appealingly knockabout and throwaway romp with the air of an extended Two Ronnies sketch.

Only in the second half does Quixote/Cervantes argue that through poetry and fantasy can life's pains be forgotten. True as that may be, such notions sound like a voguish fancy of the play's 1960s origins. Duncan's masterstroke is to have his cast of 12 double up as an onstage band. The effect, under the guidance of musical director Robert Pettigrew, is to create a junkyard orchestra which adds to the ongoing fantastical intent on Francis O'Connor's expansive, roughshod set.

This makes for some grandly impressive tableaux, which lend proceedings a strength and grandeur they probably don't deserve. Nicholas Pound's appositely under-wrought rendition of The Impossible Dream, a paean to the power of the imagination, is the only real stand-out. It's nevertheless a treat to see Pauline Knowles take centre stage as feisty love interest Aldonza in a handsomely realised, but largely inconsequential, affair.