Man of La Mancha

Winner of the New York Drama Critics Award for Best Musical, 1966To me the most interesting aspect of the success of Man of La Mancha is the fact that it plows squarely upstream against the prevailing current of philosophy in the theater. That current is best identified by its catch-labels--Theater of the Absurd, Black Comedy, the Theater of Cruelty--which is to say the theater of alienation, of moral anarchy and despair. To the practitioners of those philosophies Man of La Mancha must seem hopelessly naive in its espousal of illusion as man's strongest spiritual need, the most meaningful function of his imagination. But I've no unhappiness about that. Facts are the enemy of truth, says Cervantes-Don Quixote. And that is precisely what I felt and meant.--Dale Wasserman, from the Preface.