Tariq Ali's latest play,The New Adventures of Don Quixote, can be read as an
homage to German poet and playwright Bertolt Brecht as much as a playful tribute
to Cervantes's masterwork. The central characters from the original novel, Don
Quixote and Sancho Panza, are mounted on their beasts of burden, Rocinante and
the Mule, and Ali has them ride into the twenty-first century, where they are
confronted by old, familiar vices: war, greed, ethnic and religious prejudices,
disappointed love, and economic crisis. Amid the satirical and sad songs, there
are odd moments of happiness for Quixote, when he imagines that a wounded US
colonel is Dulcinea and