Theatre in Review: Camelot (Lincoln Center Theater/Vivian Beaumont Theater)

	Phillipa Soo, Andrew Burnap, Dakin Matthew, Jordan Donica. Photo: Joan Marcus

As Aaron Sorkin keeps telling anyone who will listen, his revised book takes the magic out of Camelot. How right he is: How else to account for the cloud of melancholy parked over the Beaumont stage? Why is the atmosphere so drained of color and life? And why does no one appear to be having the tiniest bit of fun? The playwright has apparently tried to convert this golden-age-of-Broadway musical fantasy, about King Arthur's court, into a historical drama along the lines of Becket or The Lion in Winter. It's a transmutation that would challenge the wiliest medieval alchemist; the result is arid, a musical that can't decide why anyone is singing.

To be clear, Camelot, in it is original form, is a ponderous epic with an endlessly long first act, a wildly unstable tone, and a leading lady whose intentions veer in different directions from scene to scene. It endured a nightmarish out-to-town tryout, landing librettist Alan Jay Lerner and director Moss Hart in the hospital. Reaching Broadway, it underwent a near-death experience -- thanks to critics and audiences expecting another My Fair Lady -- until a recovered Hart made some necessary cuts. A Lerner-and-Loewe tribute on The Ed Sullivan Show, featuring stars Julie Andrews, Richard Burton, and Robert Goulet, sealed the deal and lines soon formed at the box office. (A sentimental link to John F. Kennedy's presidential administration, fabricated by his widow, also helped.)

Still, despite its overloaded, wildly inconsistent book, the original Camelot is laced with wit and a seductive, of-its-time, idealism. The central triangle of King Arthur, Queen Guenevere, and Lancelot du Lac remains compelling, especially if the roles are well-cast. And even if the story lurches all over the place, it reaches a climax that rarely fails to move. The score is heavenly, especially in the sterling silver orchestrations of Robert Russell Bennett and Philip J. Lang. (Everyone remembers "If Ever I Would Leave You," but I'll take the achingly lovely "Before I Gaze at You Again," and "What Do the Simple Folk Do?", which indirectly, yet deftly, dissects a troubled marriage.) It's a fond, foolish, heart-on-its sleeve extravaganza, a tangle of elements good and bad, and you tinker with it at your peril.

Sorkin's comment about removing the magic refers to his decision to strip out the show's supernatural elements. Instead of being lured away by the spirit Nimue, Merlyn, Arthur's mentor, gets a state funeral. The title tune, describing the kingdom's unearthly control over the laws of nature, is, we are repeatedly told, a metaphor. (Sorkin seems positively embarrassed about having to keep it.) And whenever Arthur talks about pulling that sword out of the stone -- the action that earned him the throne of England -- Guenevere darkly hints that the fix was in; after all, hadn't it been loosened by thousands of previous attempts? None of this is wrong, strictly speaking; the show has always been at its weakest when it strays into fairy-tale territory and a more adult approach might, theoretically, yield something more streamlined and honestly compelling.

What's harder to understand is how the new book works to actively suppress the audience's emotional engagement in its central characters' dilemmas. In Lerner's version, Arthur and Guenevere meet cute on the eve of their arranged marriage, designed to guarantee peace between Britain and France. He is anxious, she is furious at being used as a diplomatic pawn. Unexpectedly charmed by each other, they form a companionate alliance, intoxicated by the idea of inventing a society rooted in justice. Their dream is thwarted when she falls for Lancelot, the living ideal of knighthood as envisioned by Arthur. It's a cunningly tensile setup: a loving marriage and close friendship threatened by passion, with the fate of a nation hanging in the balance. In Sorkin's rewrite, however, Arthur and Guenevere have apparently settled for a sexless arrangement, united only by a passion for social reform. (Arthur refers to Guenevere as his "business partner," a remark that, understandably, leaves her looking miffed.) They're the perfect Fabian couple, getting their thrills from enacting laws and proposing new social orders.

Two alterations in the text are especially revealing. When Arthur discovers Guenevere and Lancelot's mutual love, Lerner has him say, "If I could choose from every woman who breathes on this earth, the face I would most love, the smile, the touch, the heart, the laugh, the soul itself, every detail and feature to the smallest strand of hair, they would all be [Guenevere's]." He adds, "If I could choose from every man who breathes on this earth a man for my brother and a man for my son, a man for my friend, they would all be Lance." Sorkin cuts these lines, starting the speech in the middle, leaving Arthur to coolly analyze the situation from the royal point of view. The playwright has no interest in such emotional complexity; matters of the heart have been entirely subsumed to issues of state.

Also, after the adulterous lovers have been exposed and Guenevere condemned to death under the law, the climactic sequence built around the number "Guenevere" has been considerably shortened, no longer making the point that Arthur has arranged the execution to facilitate Lancelot's rescue of her. Also gone is the moment when Arthur weeps with joy that his beloved wife has been spared, even if, as he knows, war must follow. Here, he is a law-and-order man to the last. Perversely, the musical's most poignant passages have been dropped, apparently because they're too mushy or something.

The determination to turn Camelot in a problems-of-democracy seminar keeps bumping up against musical numbers that have other things in mind. If Guenevere is a deeply serious intellectual worried about women's' rights, why is she inappropriately cavorting in front of the court, growling her lyrics and flashing a little leg in "The Lusty Month of May?" Why is she flirting with a trio of knights in "Take Me to the Fair," urging them to carve up Lancelot in a tournament? And why are the knights, who, a minute earlier, were curtly dismissing Guenevere as a foreign interloper with dangerous ideas about equality, going along for the ride? Inconsistency is everywhere; if you reconceive Mordred, Arthur's bastard son and the show's villain, as a heartbroken child of divorce (and a borderline personality), it makes no sense for him to deliver the wittily irreverent "The Seven Deadly Virtues."

Toning down the emotional stakes between Arthur and Guenevere has other unintended consequences, for example, reducing Lancelot to Guenevere's little bit of something on the side. Lancelot, a character cut from the sturdiest cardboard, has always been the show's weakest link; it's fascinating that Sorkin had so little interest in giving him some additional dimension. I will draw a veil over the eleventh-hour scene revealing that Arthur and Guenevere's marital problems and, by extension, the collapse of a kingdom, are rooted in poor communication skills. This news is supposed to be terribly poignant; personally, I think it makes them look like idiots in desperate need of marital counseling.

The air of furrowed-brow seriousness extends to the design. Michael Yeargan's barrel-vaulted set, defined by elaborate wrought-iron screens, is vast and strangely empty. The projections by 59 Productions, of snowstorms, leafless forests, and grey skies, add to the feeling of austerity. Lap Chi Chu's generally effective lighting largely avoids color. Jennifer Moeller's costumes borrow from various periods, leaving one to ponder exactly when Camelot is taking place.

It goes without saying that the actors are constrained by the limitations of the book. Andrew Burnap's callow, emotionally constricted Arthur is off-putting at first, but he grows in the role, effectively finding his character's anguish. Phillipa Soo seems unsure what to do with Guenevere's contradictions; she sings beautifully -- her "Before I Gaze at You Again" is a highlight -- but she fails to connect with either of her leading men. If anything, Lancelot is more of a stiff than usual, but at least Jordan Donica delivers some beautifully controlled vocals. Taylor Trensch's Mordred is an irritating psychological case study, deprived of the malicious humor he has in the original. His mother -- previously his aunt -- Morgan Le Fey has been transformed from a sorceress into a woman of science ushering in the Age of Enlightenment; it's bizarre idea but Marilee Talkington is certainly striking in the role. The best work comes from Dakin Matthews, double-cast as the oracular Merlyn and the doddering Pellinore, Arthur's elderly sidekick. It pains me to point out that the final scene, in which Arthur urges the young boy Tom of Warwick to preserve the memory of Camelot, features the single worst performance by a child actor that I have ever seen. That the director Bartlett Sher has not remedied this situation is, quite simply, an embarrassment.

It's still a thrill to hear that overture, especially under Kimberly Grigsby's flawless musical direction, and the numbers come across beautifully, thanks to Marc Salzberg and Beth Lake's utterly natural sound design. If the actors are sometimes at a loss with such impish offerings as "I Wonder What the King is Doing Tonight" and "Where Are the Simple Joys of Maidenhood," the ballads are gorgeously rendered. Frederick Loewe's melodies, whether amusingly impertinent or suffused with longing and sadness, remain indestructible.

Nevertheless, this revised Camelot is hopelessly divided against itself. I am not being nostalgic; most of the classic Broadway musicals of the postwar era come with baggage nowadays and some of them never were as good as advertised. There's certainly nothing wrong with tweaking them a bit. (For example, each time I have encountered Camelot, the song list has been different; this production eliminates "Follow Me," sung by Nimue; the tedious choral number "The Jousts;" and the fantastical "The Persuasion," featuring Mordred and Morgan Le Fey.) Nevertheless, Camelot is what it is, and it stoutly resists the overhaul attempted here. The spell it once cast, however imperfectly, has been thoroughly undone. --David Barbour