Quixotic characters

THE question of naked cartwheels was still under negotiation when I met Greg Hicks. This isn't a new sport lined up for the next Olympics but a matter of artistic endeavour.

Hicks is playing the title role in a new British/Spanish stage version of Cervantes' Don Quixote being premiered in Yorkshire, and it appears that tilting at windmills wasn't its hero's only quirk.

At one point in the book, this quixotic character sheds his clothes and does cartwheels across the landscape. The idea of reproducing this on stage has been discussed but not decided upon.

All will be revealed - or not - when this large-scale English language production opens at West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, later this month.

The director is Spanish-born Josep Galindo, whose production of George Orwell's Homage To Catalon was seen in Leeds and at Northern Stage, Newcastle, three years ago. The show will be presented at Madrid's Theatro de Madrid as part of the theatre programme for the annual Madrid Festival following the Yorkshire run.

Audiences can expect a highly visual interpretation of the adventures of the knight and man servant Sancho Panza, with panoramic videoscapes of the La Mancha landscape created by video designer Mic Pool and projected on a 9ft high screen.

Hicks makes his debut at the Playhouse after a 30-year stage career that's taken in much classical work with the likes of the National Theatre and Royal Shakespeare Company. He was most recently seen in the North-East in a touring production of Angels In America.

Sancho is played by Tony Bell, whose credits include six Shakespeare productions with Propeller Theatre Company.

The script for Don Quixote, adapted from the novel by Pablo Ley and Colin Teevan, has been developed over the past two years. "It's obviously a very condensed version that tries to capture the passion and spirit of the book rather than be a faithful adaptation," explains Hicks.

The aim is to get inside Don Quixote's head, continues Bell. "It's really what happens in his imagination because the mind is a playground for the imagination.

"We start off as if we're beginning a rehearsal. Some of the action is happening in the audience as well as on stage, and the production uses video and music. The idea is to play tricks and throw the audience's imagination into different places. The subconscious is a very unpredictable place."

The result could be a shock to the audience's system. "We're making a production where you're genuinely surprised second by second," says Hicks.

"It's unpredictable, and in many ways the book is unpredictable. There's a freedom there. The dynamic may very well shift from night to night."

The Spanish director is working with a cast of ten English actors. "He says they're technically more proficient, but Spanish actors are wilder and sometimes more experimental in rehearsal," says Hicks, talking of a "mad explosion of the imagination".

"Everyone is passionate about the original. They're not trying to improve on it, they're trying to re-imagine it.

"The director is interested in making the character of Sancho Panza more intimately connected with the audience, so they won't feel they're looking at actors in costume. Sancho gets as much airtime as Quixote."

Bell realised that the part would be a testing one from the auditions. "They asked me to do so many things so fast that I knew this was going to be a challenging process," he says. "One moment you're exhilarated, the next you're terrified."

The two actors haven't worked together before but have things in common. "We're on the edge of sanity in our particular ways," jokes Bell.

Cervantes wrote the book in 1605 and Hicks considers him "incredibly inventive for his time to have a hero who deconstructs himself". He talks of a theory that our very own Shakespeare was influenced by the Spanish writer.

The first weeks of rehearsals found the cast getting physical with capoeira, a Brazilian blend of martial arts and fight dance, in order to loosen up their bodies or "get us in the spirit of free play" as Hicks puts it.

The instructor was "great at not only doing the dance but encouraging us to be more physical with each other". One exercise required the actors to launch themselves into the air and trust that their fellow actors would catch them.

"We literally threw ourselves at each other and held each other up physically, mentally and emotionally," says Bell.

Galindo is bringing his Spanish rehearsal process into the British rehearsal room. "We do have a reputation for being very strong with text and put quite a lot of depth behind the poetry," says Bell.

"It's been quite an interesting marriage so far," adds Hicks.

All the actors have done shows off the beaten track but nothing, he adds, quite as ambitious or epic at this Don Quixote.

"In many ways it's sometimes all bold simplicity, with two actors standing alone on stage with absolutely nothing, simply talking," says Hicks.

"If it works, it's should be quite exhilarating."

* Don Quixote: West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, from September 22 to October 20. Tickets 0113-2137700.