Four hundred years after the death of Don Quixote's maverick author and ‘Prince of Wits’ Miguel de Cervantes, writer James Fenton (The Orphan Of Zhao) has reimagined the ground-breaking story for the stage in a new RSC production. 

Directed by Angus Jackson (Oppenheimer), this adaptation plays with form and genre in the spirit of the original. It stars David Threlfall (Shameless, Hot Fuzz, Black Sea) as the hapless hero who loses his grip on reality and actor/comedian Rufus Hound as his squire sidekick, Sancho Panza. 

What's On spoke to Rufus to find out more about the show.

“Don Quixote is often described as the first post-modern novel,” explains Hound. “It's essentially a story about stories, which means that if you're going to do it as a play, it has to be a play about plays. Cervantes wrote it as a parody of the romantic histories that were very popular at the time, but because they've fallen out of favour in 2016, you have to do something a bit different to capture the spirit of what it's about. We've come up with this device of a group of people coming together to tell a story, where everyone except Don Quixote himself is aware that there's an audience watching. We're calling ourselves mechanicals, after the company who put on the play within a play in A Midsummer Night's Dream.”

One of the earliest examples of the novel form, Cervantes' hefty work spans two volumes and multiple adventures. Reading a large amount at once is perhaps something akin to the modern-day box-set binge-watch, with individual ‘episodes’ framed within the context of an over-arching narrative that only gets stranger as the plot progresses.

“In Book One, everyone just thinks Don Quixote is a madman, but in Book Two, he's become very famous. People start pretending to be other characters to please him and give him more adventures, so we've tried to reflect that.”

Unlike his travelling companion, Hound's character Sancho is very much aware of the audience's presence, often breaking the fourth wall to address them directly. Though Sancho starts out sceptical of Quixote's plans, over the course of their adventures, the two characters gradually grow towards each other.

“He starts off agreeing to go along because he's been offered his own island in exchange for the work. By the end of it, though, he thinks that this madman may be the most noble and decent man he's ever known, so doesn't like the idea that he's being viewed as mad rather than appreciated because of the big heart he has.”

Adapting such a complex narrative for the stage is a tall order, but it's one that Hound is confident the team is pulling off successfully by working together to solve the problems it poses.

“Whenever we find the right solution to something, everybody feels it in their bones. We've had plenty of that along the way, so I think we're all feeling rather buoyed up by the process and can't wait to show it to people. Though equally, if someone would like to give us a few more months of rehearsals, that would be great too!”

If it all sounds incredibly complicated, Hound insists that it “won't feel like that when you sit down and watch it”. The intricacies of plot and form are offset by fun, accessible inclusions such as puppets and songs, but above all else, Cervantes' story is characterised by its irresistibly irreverent and just plain silly sense of humour. 

“Most people have heard of Don Quixote without really knowing a lot about it, but there are a few quite well-known scenes that people expect to see. One is Quixote fighting windmills, and the other is him imagining that herds of sheep are battling armies. I think when people see the windmill section they'll be very pleased, and for the sheep there's some puppetry which is a joy to behold.”

Since the opportunity to appear in the show arose, Hound has been immersing himself in the world of the story, reading not only a full-text translation but also a couple of cut-down versions designed to capture the essence of the book.

“I got the comic book version before I took the job, and that's very much worth reading. Once I got the job, my son thought it sounded very exciting and wanted to know all about Don Quixote, so my wife found a kids' version at the library which I read to him while I was reading the full text. The kids' book still comes in at about 400 pages, but it's really great, and has incredible illustrations by Chris Riddell.”

Best known as a comedian, Hound is perhaps not someone you'd expect to see treading the boards at the RSC, but this is not his first significant stage role. In 2012, he took over the part of Francis Henshall from James Corden in the National Theatre's One Man, Two Guvnors, followed by a stint in the West End as Freddy in Jerry Mitchell's Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. Last year, he was also part of Trevor Nunn's Wars Of The Roses at the Rose Theatre, Kingston, an intense combined staging of three Shakespeare history plays, all performed in a single day.

“The joy of that was getting the chance to spend time with so many fantastic acting talents and being able to observe at close hand what makes them as good as they are. It was a 12-hour day for the audience and even longer for the cast, and to spend that much time with people so totally committed to making every moment on stage as good as it could possibly be was thrilling - and also great fun. Just because you're in something serious doesn't mean that every moment backstage people are talking gravely in hushed tones.”

Hound is, naturally, pleased to be diversifying his roles and moving away from the comic niche in which he initially found himself. Since 2011, he's also been raising his acting profile with a variety of film and TV performances, beginning with a handful of low-budget feature films. More recently, he’s appeared in high-profile series such as Doctor Who and Russell T Davies' Channel Four drama Cucumber, as well as the CBBC series Hounded. His motivation for this career change is primarily down to what he sees as the power of stories to influence people's thinking.

“I think what changes people's minds about the kind of society they want to live in and the aspirations they hold is often a connection to a story that moves them, and I had a bit of an epiphany that I wanted to be part of that. With stand-up, you can make jokes and shout about what's wrong with the world, but the one thing you always have to do as a comedian is make people laugh. When I found myself writing less and less funny things, I thought it might be time to try a different approach.”

It's not all so high-minded, however - there was an ulterior motive for choosing acting over any other new direction.

“I also just really like showing off, so in terms of the skillset I had, it seemed like the most effective thing I could do!”