Harvard-Radcliffe Summer Theater (HRST) has begun their season with an appropriately light piece, Dale Wasserman's "Man of la Mancha," an upbeat musical retelling of Cervantes' Don Quixote.

Staged with convivial informality in HRST's Loeb Ex home, the production is carried by the same comic absurdity that made the novel famous.

The audience might be troubled by the earnest stiffness of the opening scene in which Cervantes (played by Eric Fleisig-Greene '00) is thrown into a Spanish Inquisition jail. The problem of seriousness is instantaneously solved, however, the moment Kenneth P. Herrera '03 as Sancho Panza opens his mouth and lets out his gloriously funny falsetto.

From that point forward, director Joseph C. Gfaller '01 does an admirable job of creating a production true to the schizophrenic nature of its main character: at once serious and silly, musical and straight, philosophical and plebian.

Starting with a perfectly lanky, idealistic and dreamy Greene playing Cervantes/Don Quixote, Gfaller has assembled a cast capable of filling out the costumes of these super-legendary characters. Kenneth Herrera makes a great Sancho Panza, capable of being both the devoutly loyal straight man and the perpetrator of Sancho's own brand of comic truth.

Watching the theatrical duo gallop around on toy-horses with the lanky Greene blustering away in a puffed-out tenor and the rotund Herrera squeaking a charming countermelody seems to hit right at the heart of Don Quixote.

Similarly picture-perfect in the role of Aldonza (Quixote's great lady/ local whore), Juliene James '00 carries off the part with Carmen-like blend of indignation, haughty pride and passionate song. Though at times her hurricane-like disregard for the other characters seems a bit overdone

(to the point of making her more tender moments with Greene slightly unconvincing), her skills as a vocalist add a tremendous amount and create the production's best musical moments.