Lyricist Joe Darion wrote, “When I first heard that ‘Don Quixote’ was to be done as a musical, I asked ‘Which chapter are they dramatizing?’ The answer was, ‘No chapter. The whole works.’”

After “Oliver Twist” became “Oliver!” and before Victor Hugo took over the world with “Les Miserables,” playwright and television wrier Dale Wasserman adapted his 1959 teleplay “I, Don Quixote,” with composer Mitch Leigh and lyricist Joe Darion, into “Man of La Mancha.” Wasserman’s previous theatrical work – the 1963 stage version of Ken Kesey’s novel “Once Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” was a Broadway failure, but was a success all over the world (the San Francisco production ran for six years).

“Man of La Mancha” is one of the great international hits of the American musical stage. It had a single hit on the charts – “The Impossible Dream” - one of the most well known songs from any musical. And the cast album sold so well that people knew the entire score. It had work by the legendary choreographer Jack Cole – the father of theatrical jazz dancing. It put its original home, Goodspeed Opera House on the map. And when the show’s original producer, neophyte Albert Selden (who had used his family’s money to renovate the Goodspeed), could not find Broadway producers to move the show to New York, he enlisted a partner, Hal James, and they raised the $250,000 it took to open on Broadway. No Times Square theatre wanted them, so they went to the ANTA Washington Square in Greenwich Village, an 1,100 seat thrust stage theatre (it qualified as Broadway because of its union personnel), which only brought the cast closer to the audience! John Chapman said in the Daily News, “An exquisite musical play – the finest and most original work in our music theatre since ‘Fiddler on the Roof.’ It moves enthrallingly from its imaginative beginning to a heart-wrenching end.”

The show made a star of its leading man Richard Kiley, and gave Joan Diener, the wife of its director Albert Marre, her most enduring theatre role as Aldonza. It won the New York Drama Critics Circle and the 1966 Tony Award for Best Musical, besting both “Sweet Charity” and “Mame.” In 1967, it was chosen as the opening attraction of the Ahmanson Theatre starring Kiley and Diener, a role she continued to play—up to and including in the 1992 Broadway revival. It ran 2,328 performances – and with “Hello, Dolly, “Fiddler on the Roof,” “Cabaret” and “Mame” – made Broadway musicals one of the great popular entertainments of the sixties – until rock culture caught up with the medium with the opening of “Hair.” Kiley returned to Broadway twice in the role, and later Broadway revivals starred Raul Julia and Brian Stokes Mitchell. “Man of La Mancha” was translated into German, Hebrew, Japanese, Icelandic, Gujarati, Uzbekistani, Magyar, Slovenian, Swahili, Finish, Ukranian and nine different Spanish dialects. Placido Domingo and Jim Nabors starred in recorded versions.