Lerner and Loewe's Camelot: Inevitably, Affectionately Imperfect

While watching the latest production, I realized that Camelot has become a lot like Candide, Leonard Bernstein's 1956 musical based on Voltaire's novella. Candide had a glittering Bernstein score and a much-criticized book by Lillian Hellman. It only ran 73 performances, but its original cast recording was treasured because it preserved Bernstein's music. Candide was revived on Broadway in 1974 with a new book by Hugh Wheeler and additional lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. Opera companies expressed an interest, and the show was reworked again, with songs that had been cut from the 1956 production being added. In 1988, Bernstein wanted a new production that reflected his original intentions, and, Wheeler having died, his book was adapted by John Wells. There are, then, a number of versions of Candide around, and your view of it will depend on which version you've seen.

Camelot is like that, and this may reflect its troubled gestation. In its Toronto tryout, it ran four hours. It was reworked and reworked. The director Moss Hart had a heart attack, and its composer Frederick Loewe became ill as well. Its lyricist and librettist Alan Jay Lerner experienced bleeding ulcers. Songs were added and some, such as a duet by Morgan Le Fey and Mordred, were cut. A song for Arthur's knights, "Fie on Goodness," in which they express discontent in living in a kingdom that is at peace, was written to hide a scene change--the knights sang in front of a curtain while the crew changed the scenery. It was subsequently cut, although it and another cut number, "Then You May Take Me to the Fair," are on the original case album. "Then You May Take Me to the Fair," however, was restored for the movie version. In one production I saw, "Follow Me," a song originally sung by the enchantress Nimue to lure Merlin away, became a love song sung by Lancelot to Guenevere. So, there has always been some fluidity associated with Camelot. In the Shakespeare Theatre production, they restored "Fie on Goodness."

I have seen Camelot five times. This doesn't include Joshua Logan's atrociously-directed 1967 film version. I saw the national touring company in 1963 at the National Theatre from seats in the second balcony that cost my mother $2.50 at the time. George Wallace played King Arthur, Anne Jeffreys, Guenevere, and Arthur Treacher (who later founded fish and chip restaurants), King Pellimore. A few years later, my mother took us to a forgettable version at either the  Burn Brae or Harlequin dinner theatre near Washington. In 1980, my wife and I and her mom and dad saw Richard Burton in New York recreate the role of King Arthur he had created in 1960. In 1993, my wife and I saw Robert Goulet, who had originated the role of Lancelot, phone in a performance on Broadway as King Arthur. And then a 25-year hiatus until my wife took me to the Shakespeare Theatre for my birthday.

It was an uneven production. It was very well sung. But to offset the concern that the musical begins happy and ends sad, they interpolated an opening scene in which the older Arthur, on the eve of his last battle, asks his mentor Merlin to show him how he had come to such a sad end. The actual first scene of the original musical has a young Arthur hiding in a tree to catch a glimpse of Guenevere, his bride-to-be. At the Shakespeare Theatre, a giant, metal-seeming tree filled the stage. It was so large actors walking around it or under it had to dodge being slammed in the face by a silver branch. The song "The Lusty Month of May" prompted a listless and non-lusty dance number. Sexist dialogue from 1960 was replaced. In dialogue that is part of Arthur's song, "How to Handle a Woman," he no longer says that Merlin told him, "Never be too disturbed that you don't understand what a woman is thinking. They don't do it very often," but, instead, "Never be too disturbed that you don't understand what a woman is thinking. She'll tell you when she wants you to know." And Guenevere becomes much more of a contributor to the idea that leads to the formation of the Round Table.

Camelot begins happy and ends sad because that has often happened with civilizations and the ideas behind them. The Roman Empire was followed by the Dark Ages, and the Renaissance by the Reformation and religious wars. Alan Jay Lerner's phrase "one brief shining moment" was applied after Kennedy's assassination to his 1,000 days in office to reflect a great sense of loss. Perhaps the story of Arthur struck critics in 1960 as an odd one for a musical, but that was before Sweeney Todd, Little Shop of Horrors, Titanic, and Assassins. It was, perhaps, ahead of its time.

Camelot's score is one of Broadway's finest: "If Ever I Would Leave You," "What Do the Simple Folks Do?", "Before I Gaze on You Again," :"I Loved You Once in Silence," "How to Handle a Woman." "Sweeping" and "luscious" are good words to describe Loewe's music. Stephen Sondheim in his book Finishing the Hat writes that in his lyrics Lerner wasn't as clever as he thought he was. But I've always been impressed by the internal rhyming in the Camelot lyrics: "If ever I would leave you/It wouldn't be in springtime/Knowing how in spring I'm bewitched by you so" or "The wee folk and the grown folk/Who wander to and fro/Have ways known to their own folk/We throne folk don't know." And it is no overstatement that his lyrics for the "Camelot" reprise--"Don't let it be forgot/That once there was a spot/For one brief shining moment/That was known as Camelot"--have touched several generations.

There may never be a perfect production of Camelot. I didn't see the 1960 production, but, as I've mentioned, it was a work-in-progress. When we saw Burton in 1980, his voice was still magnificent, but his arms were so weakened by bursitis and arthritis that he could barely lift a sword. Camelot, which is about great idea of a peaceful world that is imperfectly implemented, is itself imperfect. But its relevance will always be with us.