Repertory Philippines’ ‘Man of La Mancha’: Impossible Dream, Imported Vision
Repertory Philippines’ ‘Man of La Mancha’: Impossible Dream, Imported Vision
Repertory Philippines (REP) continues their tradition of bringing beloved Broadway classics to Filipino audiences with their re-staging of Wasserman, Leigh, and Darion’s Man of La Mancha at the Repertory Eastwood Theater for a limited weekend run this June. Unsurprisingly, the performances–led by arguably one of the greatest Filipino performers of all time, Nonie Buencamino, who has found the perfect depiction of desperate naïveté and vulnerability that is found within the character of Miguel de Cervantes, more commonly known as Don Quixote–and the execution, with some minor audio hiccups here and there, leave little to no room for criticism.
Buencamino’s fierce delivery of The Impossible Dream captures the unshakable defiance of a manifesto against life’s aches and sorrows, that when partnered with Katrine Sunga’s hardened cynicism and hidden vulnerability as Aldonza/Dulcinea, and Marvin Ong’s charm and unwavering loyalty as both Cervantes’ manservant and Sancho Panza, coalesces into an emotional rollercoaster of an experience in a panoptic background of a set. The material itself is familiar enough and requires no synopsis nor character breakdown, so I’d rather focus on one production aspect that personally felt off: the set design.
From what the director himself has written in the souvenir booklet, Nelsito Gomez borrowed artistic concepts from Henry Godinez’s 2025 Northwestern University staging of La Mancha in REP’s own 2026 re-staging, specifically its bleak and dehumanizing depiction of incarceration–a step away from the traditional Spanish Inquisition-era dungeon aesthetics typically associated with the musical. Both modern interpretations align with the serious issue of the U.S. immigration crisis, albeit Gomez’s interpretation is much more literal with the chain-link fence, sterile tiled walls, and industrial LED panels that are a recreation of first-world (or is it only American?) detention centers.
While I understand Gomez’s mission of reimagining theater classics to “make the work feel new again” and “confront and understand our present,” his deliberate choice to import Godinez’s vision without at least recontextualizing it to the Philippines’ very own turbulent political climate creates a geographical dissonance away from his own stated goal. What made Godinez’s version successful is his effective execution of grounding the material in the present by aligning La Mancha’s inquisition storyline with his social commentary about the U.S.-Mexico border and ICE detention centers. Gomez, however, created the exact same visual cues, down to the Americanized police attire, when our nation has its own set of issues regarding the enemies of the state: extrajudicial killings, forced disappearances (desaparecidos), and the 292% jail congestion rate–all of which are left unaddressed as if to gaze at your neighbors’ burning houses while ignoring your own burning home.
The inquisition could’ve mirrored the weaponization of Philippine law in the war on drugs or the pertinent issues of red-tagging and desaparecidos, but alas I am merely an avid theatergoer with an opinionated mind focused on the “could-have-beens.” While I’ve nitpicked this specific artistic choice, I won’t discount the immense talent of the performers and creative team behind REP’s latest theater production. The anachronistic interpretation did move past nostalgia to speak of modern sociopolitical realities. It just so happens that the “now,” and those damn windmills, are disappointingly made in the USA.
