Brian Stokes Mitchell will tilt at a few windmills in a new Broadway production of the perennially popular musical Man of La Mancha. The show is to begin rehearsals in August and try out in Boston and Washington, before opening in New York this December.

Jonathan Kent, the London director behind such Britain-to-Broadway hits as Medea with Diana Rigg and Hamlet with Ralph Fiennes, will be at the helm.

David Stone, Jon B. Platt, John Reid, Sandy Gallin/Susan Gallin & USA Ostar Theatricals will produce. The design team includes sets and costumes by Paul Brown; ;ighting design by Paul Gallo; and sound design by Tony Meola.

Mitchell was last seen on Broadway in Kiss Me, Kate, for which he won a Tony. Before that, he starred in Ragtime. The New York Post reported that Audra McDonald is being sought for the role of Dulcinea.

1965's Man of La Mancha brought the world "The Impossible Dream," the durable and widely-known inspirational ballad. The song explained the philosophy of the impoverished, addled Spaniard, Don Quixote, who believed himself to be a knight who would "right the unrightable wrong" and "reach the unreachable star," to say nothing of being "willing to march into hell for a heavenly cause." The musical, which won a Tony for Best Musical in 1965, was drawn from Miguel Cervantes' 17th-century novel, "Don Quixote," as distilled through a script by Dale Wasserman. The music is by Mitch Leigh, with lyrics by Joe Darion, who died last year. Leigh wrote several songs for the show with the poet W.H. Auden, but they disagreed about aspects of the project, so Darion was enlisted. The show began life at the Goodspeed Opera House in East Haddam, CT, and had a smash success for 2,328 performances on Broadway.