Camelot by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe. Matt Pfeiffer directs at Act II Playhouse, Ambler PA through June 24, 2018
It’s good to see Camelot back on stage. Warts and all.
“Wart” is the childhood nickname of King Arthur, and the name he tells Guenevere when they first meet. And it’s the word I must use to describe this flawed theater piece written by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe. Despite the script’s shortcomings, however, the show packs an emotional wallop in this intimate staging by Act II Playhouse.
Jeff Coon has the gravitas needed for Arthur, and the maturity that makes him believable as a father figure to Lancelot. He has more than ample voice for a part originally owned by the non-singers Richard Burton and Richard Harris. His songs are touching when half-sung, sotto voce, and its gratifying that Coon doesn’t try to belt them. Coon succeeds, better than others who’ve done the role before, in communicating Arthur’s mixed feelings about his illegitimate son, Mordred, who engineers the downfall of Arthur’s marriage and his kingdom.
Eileen Cella is adorably touching as Guenevere, with the pure soprano voice that impressed us previously as Eliza Doolittle for this theater company. Thank goodness, this production restores a wonderful song for her, “Then You May Take Me To the Fair,” which was cut from the show after it opened on Broadway in 1960 (although Julie Andrews sang it on the cast recording.)
Kevin Toniazzo-Naughton is tall and imposing with a ringing baritone voice as Lancelot. He interpolates an unwritten high F at the end of his ballad, “If Ever I Would Leave You,” that deservedly brings the house down. This is a tough role; the character is an unpleasant narcissist, but he’s required to win our hearts as the romantic lead.
Luke Bradt impresses with the twisted smile and shifty eyes of his Mordred. Scott Langdon is endearing as the wizard Merlyn and also as the king’s friend Pellinore. Rajeer Alford, Jordan Dobson and Joey Abramowicz are excellent in the supporting roles of the knights Dinaden, Sagramore and Lionel. Iman Aaliyah is fine in the recently-invented role of a narrator.
Dan Matarazzo is so good at the piano that he makes us forget that there’s no orchestra. Dann Dunn and Ian Rose deserve great credit for staging choreography and fight sequences that are effective even on a small stage with the audience in close proximity. Matt Pfeiffer pulls it all together with his skillful direction.
Camelot entices because of its portrait of a monarch with doubts and insecurities who initiates an era of idealism, only to see it crumble. But librettist/lyricist Lerner applied a heavy hand when his dialogue preaches about an end to killing, and pedantically states that the rule of might is evil. (Lerner did that again, with Leonard Bernstein in their musical 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue which I sat through in 1976.)
Camelot overcomes shortcomings in the script and grabs our gut. It is fascinating, even though no motivation is supplied for Guenevere falling in love with Lancelot. He is a pompous braggart and she despises him; then, suddenly, she adores him. We in the audience are supposed to laugh at him, then he gets to sing the big romantic ballad, “If Ever I Would Leave You,” and we’re expected to cheer for him.
Lerner shortchanged us by not exploring generational differences. Late in the play, Arthur says he thinks of Lancelot as a brother and as a son. Guenevere’s feelings for Lancelot, thus, are those of a stepmother laced with incest. The playwright also failed to indicate how Arthur neglected his wife. The script shows no progression of him and Guenevere drifting apart and thus supplying an opening to an extra-marital affair.
Also, the second act has Arthur regret that if the Round Table is destroyed the land will return to the chaos and evil that preceded his reign. But, earlier, no indication was given about such a sad state of affairs. It would have been simple to show us a nation in turmoil in its pre-Round Table days, but Lerner didn’t do so.
Instead, Lerner chose to include multiple references to Pellinore’s interminable search for a Questing Beast, and to Merlyn’s habit of changing Arthur into various animals and birds. These are quaint stories that distract from the drama. Pellinore himself is like Colonel Pickering in My Fair Lady, the affable sidekick of the leading man, but his relationship is less well-defined. Pickering is Higgins’s bachelor housemate, professional colleague and social companion; but what is Pellinore’s connection to Arthur?
I can’t forget that the preparation of this complicated show killed Moss Hart. The director was frustrated as he tried to edit a production that ran four-and-a-half hours at its Toronto premiere while Lerner didn’t want anything removed, and Hart suffered a major heart attack at the age of 57. He returned to work, then died later that year from another heart attack. I am personally touched because the first non-musical play I ever saw was Hart’s comedy Light Up the Sky; and because I became friends with Hart’s widow, Kitty Carlisle.
Yes, I take it personally; but the show bewitches me anyway. The torment of a man realizing that his wife loves another man is heart-rending. The contrast of public persona versus private life is dramatic. And I’m riveted when I see that Arthur and Guenevere both fall in love with Lancelot — one paternalistically and one romantically. Lerner and Loewe wrote some lovely songs that continued in the vein of their earlier My Fair Lady. Lerner’s lyrics are show-offy and call too much attention to his craft, but it sure is fun to hear lines like “You’ll disconnect him?” “I’ll vivisect him.” “You’ll open-wide him?” “I’ll subdivide him.”
Jacqueline Kennedy told how her husband enjoyed the final number on the Camelot LP in which Arthur knights a young boy and tells him to pass on his story to future generations:
“Don’t let it be forgot / That once there was a spot, /
For one brief, shining moment / That was known as Camelot.”
Incidentally, the youngster in that final scene is called Thomas, and he’s named for Sir Thomas Malory, the 15th-century author of Le Morte d’Arthur, the original biography of King Arthur. That’s just one of many literary allusions by the complicated Lerner.
The essence of Camelot is the final scene where Arthur loses his love, his friend and his Round Table, yet a small boy appears who wishes to become a knight and thus Arthur realizes that his vision remains alive and his life has not been a failure. That’s what makes this play endure, and worth seeing again.