BANGOR – It isn’t every day that one is granted the opportunity to watch someone with a true mastery of a particular craft execute that craft in front of you. Witnessing greatness unfold in person is a rare and precious gift … a gift granted to the audience at the Cross Insurance Center on Saturday night.

Steve Martin and Martin Short are comedy legends, icons who have been delivering big laughs to audiences for over 40 years. And they took to the CIC stage to deliver a top-notch performance to the thousands of people who eagerly embraced the chance to share in those laughs.

For close to two hours, the crowd was regaled with banter, songs, jokes and conversation – a variety show that offered up Vaudevillian echoes while also feeling very current. Martin and Short struck a delicate balance, celebrating their lifelong love of show business while also gently satirizing and subverting the very structures that bore their affection.

There are certain stories that invite retelling. These are stories that have embedded themselves deeply into the collective psyche, demanding to be told and retold.

The story of Don Quixote has been one such story. Even from its inception some four centuries ago, when Miguel de Cervantes put pen to paper and spun out the tale that would become the most influential Spanish literary work in history, the work deemed by many to be the genesis of the modern novel, the tale of the erstwhile knight errant and his quest for love and chivalry continues to resonate.

The newest exploration of the classic story comes from Salman Rushdie, whose latest novel is “Quichotte” (Random House, $28). It’s a layered metafictional take on the tale, a story that succinctly blends the modern with the postmodern as well as a deft use of a classic touchstone to explore a much more current cultural landscape.

Reality and surreality collide as an elderly Indian-American man, his once-sharp mind somewhat addled by a steady diet of TV and travel, is swept up into a romantic notion – a notion for which he’s willing to cross the country. But there’s more to this man’s world than he could ever know, for despite his own resistance to the idea of a higher power, he is in fact subject to the whims of his own creator – though perhaps not in the way one might expect.