'Camelot' has returned to Broadway after 63 years

 

     I had been looking forward to Camelot since I learned it was coming to Lincoln Center this spring.  I’ve loved the original cast recording most of my life but I’ve never seen the show, just the movie version when I was in elementary school.

     Director Bartlett Sher brought lavish revivals of two other Golden Age musicals, South Pacific and The King and I, to Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theatre and I expected another in the first Broadway revival of this Lerner and Loewe classic retelling of the Arthurian legend, which opened on Broadway 63 years ago.  Unfortunately I was disappointed, largely because of set designer Michael Yeargan’s decision to present the entire almost three-hour musical on a nearly bare stage.  Even though the show has a 27-person cast and 30-piece orchestra I felt I was watching a concert version.  The actors came on to sing those lovely songs but I felt distanced from the story.

     I was also distracted by the humor throughout.  Having never seen the stage show I don’t know if that was a part of the original or if that is particular to Aaron Sorkin’s book adaptation.  I didn’t like it.  I wasn’t prepared for a musical comedy, much as I might like them in other cases.  It had the feel of television, which makes sense because Sorkin is the creator of the hit TV show “The West Wing.”  

     But he is also a man of the theatre, having made his Broadway debut with his play “A Few Good Men.”  More recently he adapted the book for another classic, To Kill a Mockingbird.  His interpretation greatly strengthened that story.  He did improve Camelot’s book in some ways, such as by taking out the supernatural elements.  I wish he had taken away more.  The show is too long.  I was thrilled to hear the final lines, “Each evening from December to December,” movingly delivered by Andrew Burnap as King Arthur.  Thrilled because they are so touching but also because it meant the show was ending.  Cut more Mr. Sorkin.  I heard other audience members complaining about the length as well.

     The songs, however, do not disappoint.  My heart soared right from the first notes of the overture (music director, Kimberly Grigsby).  “Camelot,” “The Lusty Month of May,” “How to Handle a Woman,” “Before I Gaze at You Again” and “If Ever I Would Leave You” are brought to us with perfection by Burnap, Phillipa Soo as Guenevere and Jordan Donica as Lancelot.  

     Soo is one of my favorite musical theatre performers.  I saw her in her first show right out of school, when she starred as Natasha in Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812 off-off-Broadway.  I couldn’t take my eyes off of her.  She played young and vulnerable beautifully and I loved her expressive face.  I listen now to her exquisite voice on the cast recording of Hamilton, in which she played Eliza.   

     She was the perfect Guenevere, whether frolicking around the Maypole (choreography by Byron Easley) in a pink dress (costumes by Jennifer Moeller) or in my favorite scene, the one when she’s leaving Arthur.  She tells him she loves him and by the way she hugs him deeply it is clear that she does.  It’s heartbreaking because they do love each other, except for her it’s not enough to keep her from running off with Lancelot. 

     I wish I could have been that moved by the rest of the show.  The bare stage technique doesn’t have to be distancing.  It works effectively in the current revival of A Doll’s House.  For me it put all the attention on the play and I was involved throughout.  In Camelot it distanced me from the story.