Without good voices, any performance of "Man of La Mancha" would be an impossible dream, so it's good to note the heavy presence of the music department in the University of Hawai'i production now at Kennedy Theatre.

Music professor John Mount takes the starring role, while interim music department chair Laurence Paxton adds his voice to the ensemble as Padre, and interim dean of Arts and Humanities Tom Bingham conducts.

Glenn Cannon, from the Department of Theatre and Dance, directs a student/faculty cast that looks and sounds good — and that has the right feel for this 40-year-old Broadway musical.

A successful commercial stage adaptation of Miguel de Cervantes' 17th-century tome "Don Quixote" is not easy to pull off. The production team of Dale Wasserman (book), Mitch Leigh (music) and Joe Darion (lyrics) make it work by setting it as a play within a play, simplifying the linear action, and letting the musical numbers drive the story.

As a result, a couple of hours in the theater can give audiences a nodding acquaintance with a classic that might have repelled them in its original printed form. And the noble civility of the central character steers the plot through a crass and devious landscape to eventually win the day.

It's a good role for Mount, showing off his articulate, powerful bass/baritone voice and allowing him to play three characters: playwright Cervantes (imprisoned by the Spanish Inquisition), and his literary creations (the gentle Alonso Quijana and his tilting alter ego, Don Quixote) with whom he diverts his fellow prisoners.

Musical numbers give the character its stature, however, and Mount does justice to the title song, "Dulcinea," and the hit number "The Impossible Dream." Director Cannon correctly chooses to let the big numbers stand as musical moments, focusing the singer in a spotlight with little distracting movement.

But we'd like to see more movement in Katherine Jones' choreography, which treats the dancing horses without much imagination and misses opportunities to add drama to the fight with the muleteers and the brutalizing of Aldonza.

The major supporting roles are well cast with singers who can also act. Erin Sujan Kim is striking as the emotionally excessive Aldonza, seething with physical anger as she smacks around the muleteers and delivers some of musical theater's harshest lyrics.

"I was born in a ditch by a mother who left me there, naked and cold and too hungry to cry. I never blamed her, I'm sure she left hoping that I'd have the good sense to die."

But Kim also shows a softer side in reprising Cervantes' big number in the supportive and uplifting finale.

Daren Kimura offers nice balance as Cervantes' man servant, Sancho Panza, adding humor and irony to his master's steadfast delusions. Kimura uses the simple tunes "I Like Him" and "A Little Gossip" well, contrasting the show's somber, imposing tone.

Justin DeLand designs a monolithic stone dungeon that features two curving staircases that work like a giant set of pincers to separate the prisoners below from the inquisitors above. It's a surprising image that may be architecturally improbable but creates the necessary chilling effect.

Joseph T. Rozmiarek has reviewed theater performances in Hawai'i since 1973.