Don Quixote, Man of Clackmannanshire review

At first, this play seems simply an excuse for a pun: La Mancha and the small central Scottish county of Clackmannanshire sound not dissimilar if you say them quickly enough. Yet in fitting the story of Miguel de Cervantes’ famed 17th-century fantasist and self-proclaimed knight errant around the life of wayward Alloa pensioner Donald, writer Ben Lewis has come up with a snappy, thoughtful and very funny text that speaks to our times.

Donald (Benny Young) has reignited his passion for medieval reenactment in overenthusiastic manner; he dresses in rusty armour, sticks a lance through his television and goes on a vaguely defined crusade through the streets on his mobility scooter "steed". His behaviour is batty and outdated, yet there’s a simple purity to his motives, with Young throwing himself into this delicious and all-too-rare role of an elder character with purpose and agency. The sexist manifestation of Donald’s supposed chivalry is amusingly out-of-step with the modern world, yet the way he’s mystified by the toil of his overworked carer (Nicole Sawyerr), “wiping ancient arse for minimum wage”, or the subservience of his great-nephew Sandy (Sean Connor) to his supermarket boss inspires admiration for his apparent free-spirited nature.

Connor’s Sandy is impressively motor-mouthed, turning his own mini-quest to purchase the last buffet bar at the local Esso garage into a breathless soliloquy. On a child’s bike, this witless squire rides the streets with his elder – Donald and Sandy now a modern-day Don and Sancho – in search of windmills to conquer. Or in this case, wind turbines. Alongside, Emily Winter is Donald’s long-suffering niece, and Irene Macdougall is the homecare assessor whose secret past threatens to bring Donald’s world down – not just his freedom at home, but also his carefully constructed fantasy – with the suggestion he might have led a feeble and unimpressive life after all.

Together, Sawyerr, Winter and Macdougall play a chorus of characters, including a drunken hen party Donald and Sandy meet along their way, with Donald spotting a Poundland tiara and pledging to serve his queen. The trio shift Karen Tennent’s set of cluttered sideboard, garden shed and illuminated bus stops and traffic cones around the adventurers, and the town itself becomes like a dream.

Musicians Paddy Anderson and Pablo Dominguez perform a live flamenco soundtrack, and director Lu Kemp draws out both the blunt, modern-day Scots humour of Lewis’ writing, and the richness of meaning within. At heart, the piece is still a story about the stories we tell ourselves and their very existential purpose.

Yet what role do stories serve in 2022? Are they now dangerous conspiracy theories, or a numbing comfort that insulates us from reality? Or – especially at the end of life – do they still give us hope? Such big questions are addressed here, with a swashbuckling lightness of touch.