Review: ‘Camelot’ can’t quite rise above ’60s-era origins
“Camelot,” the latest entry in the season’s Best of Broadway series, advertises itself as “The story as you’ve never seen it before.”
Yet it’s not clear what the tagline is supposed to mean, even given what actress Mary McNulty – who plays Guinevere – told The Spokesman-Review in an interview. McNulty explained that the production’s artistic staff wanted to see the story with “fresh eyes.” They wanted to create a more authentic feel and to focus on the story’s love triangle “and bringing these three people to life in a human way.”
Certainly everyone is familiar with the show’s basic plot. Based on the T.H. White novel “The Once and Future King,” which itself told a loose version of the legend involving King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, “Camelot” focuses on Arthur’s desire to be a good king. To change, as he says, “might makes right” into “might for right.”
The irony, of course, is that Arthur never truly sees himself as kingly material. And when his mentor, the wizard Merlin, shuffles off to a kind of Hogwarts afterlife, Arthur is left plagued with self-doubt.
Only his love for Guinevere sustains him. And when the gallant, if more-than-slightly priggish, Lancelot shows up and sparks flash between the French lug and the queen – well, Arthur’s baser instincts take over and his grand ambitions don’t last much more than “one brief shining moment.”
Clearly, “Camelot” is classic Broadway entertainment. It features big show tunes, swashbuckling heroes, lust and passion and lots of moments filled with more corn than an Iowa silo.
Which is another way of saying that, even though it was written by the great Broadway team of Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe – whose long collaboration included “Brigadoon” and “My Fair Lady” – “Camelot” hasn’t aged particularly well.
And this sense of theatrical geriatrics isn’t helped by a production that, at times, feels strangely lacking in energy. On Thursday’s opening night, nothing of real import occurred until more than an hour into the first act when, following the jousting scene, Lancelot’s first act of real heroism is presented in near-silence.
Until then, much of the stage patter felt little more than just that: mere patter.
A smallish traveling-show cast just can’t fill the stage the way a bona-fide Broadway musical can. But this company’s production does have high points, among them an impressive sense of staging and lighting effects that sometimes transfixed individual actors in an almost ethereal sense. McNulty boasts a strong, clear voice. And Adam Grabau as Arthur is never better than when he sings a duet with her, “What Do the Simple Folk Do?”.
Unfortunately, though Mark Poppleton plays his dual roles of Merlin and King Pellinore with the same kind of Shakespeare’s-fool comic quality, Tim Rogan doesn’t command the stage the way Lancelot should. All things considered, Woodridge Elementary sixth-grader Jameson Elton – one of three local actors who auditioned and won the opportunity to portray the character Tom of Warwick – was as impressive as anyone in the cast.
Except, of course, for Kasidy Devlin, who plays the gloriously despicable Mordred. Devlin’s impish talents make the song “Fie on Goodness” the closest thing this production has to a showstopper.
Mordred the entertainer? Maybe that’s the “Camelot” we’ve never seen before.