Concert Review: LAGQ's "The Ingenious Gentleman"

[solicitr]

There isn't any better guitar ensemble in the business than the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet, but here they've topped themselves, touring with something which is wonderfully unclassifiable except generically as a 'performance piece.' The Ingenious Gentleman is a stage reading of Don Quixote (much abridged, natch), accompanied by Spanish vihuela and lute pieces of Cervantes' time. The result is, well , splendiferous.

The script was adapted by group leader William Kanengiser together with John Cleese of Python fame, using the excellent idiomatic translation by Edith Grossman, and even in very brief it brings out both the humor (often absurdist, in fact Cervates already wrote the Cheese Shop sketch 400 years ago!), but also the pathos, the philosophy, and the amazing 'post-modern' self-referentiality. Cleese didn't take the show on tour, so narration duties when I saw it were taken by the wonderful Phil Proctor of Firesign Theater (occasionally though he's clearly channeling Cleese).

And the music! I gotta admit I have a weakness for the era anyway, but the LAGQ's playing was, as always, virtuosic, impeccable, and keyed to the words brilliantly.

If they play near you, don't miss this.