Changes to CAMELOT — Page 2

Once again, the plot isn't what makes CAMELOT great, it's the score. Or, perhaps, as with the original, the cast. But, they don't have anyone near that original cast.

I'm skipping this when it comes to my town. I'm not a huge Camelot fan. One of the reasons I wanted to see it was to see York sing that lovely song, but it's cut, so there goes my trip.

BroadwayBaby6, I love you.

"Rachel York is supernaturally talented." Amen! I think she will be stupendous as Guenevere.

BobbyBubby, you'd seriously skip this tour because of one song? Sure, "I Loved You Once in Silence" is pretty, but it's not the greatest song in the show by far. "Before I Gaze at You Again" is much more emotional and heartfelt and gets the same message across in a much more meaningful way. It's got more levels to it, and I can't wait to hear what Rachel does with it. She is an expert at nuance. I think she'll have the audience in tears with it.

I saw the NSMT production last summer, and believe me when I tell you, cutting it down is a blessing. They did a superb job with it, but at three plus hours, it just didn't soar. I'm looking forward to seeing what this new creative team has done with it. Of course it's hard to trim "precious" material, but let's see what the new concept is before damning it.

lc

Nobodyhome,

Very interesting that last analysis of what makes someone a star. Those with a distinct persona are the ones who get "branded" so to speak. Those who are more versatile, whose own personalities disappear in service to the character, aren't as well known or memorable.

I have to disagree about Rachel York's voice, though. While no Merman or Andrews in terms of distinct vocal quality and styling, I believe her voice is distinguishable from others of her generation. Her solo album proves that. When doing Broadway, she sings in service to a character and therefore does change her vocal qualities with each role. But when she lets loose as just Rachel, she sets herself apart.

Sorry for getting a little OT, but I liked your points about star quality.

lc

What have you seen her in?

lc

That's pretty extensive. But I think the one that might put you over the top is Victor/Victoria. IMO, that's Rachel at her comic genius best. She was so unihibited. I really felt she stole the show from Julie Andrews, which was no small feat.

It's on DVD, and you may be able to rent it from Netflix. Don't know for sure.

If that doesn't sell you, nothing will.

lc

lc

As I've said here before, opening night of the World Premiere of "Camelot" when I was six was the first musical I ever saw at The O'Keefe Centre in Toronto. The show seemed to run about five, long hours but nobody cared. It was Burton and Andrews and Goulet. I have as an adult met Andrews (twice) and Roddy McDowall (at my agent's Christmas party in Los Angeles, the man could sure tell stories) and Robert Goulet sat in my mother's lap and sang to her during his show at The Imperial Room in Toronto. I would love to have met Burton, but friends tell me it's better to live with the dream than the reality.

Anyway, truncating the show sounds like one of those cut down versions done at a Five Flags theme park.

It's Camelot, for gawd's sake. You expect schmaltz and pagentry, not brevity. And no "I Loved You Once In Silence????" The song is one of the greatest classics of the genre?

Maybe they should begin the show at the may fair and do a voice over, "Previously, in Camelot....."

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Updated On: 1/15/07 at 05:36 AM

"Sorry, Lerner makes no such distincttion (I'm looking at the Random House edition even as I write this.). He says "many years" -- and many years could be ten but it could also be twenty. "

Sean, I'm looking at the Random House script myself, as republished in volume 2 of Great Musicals of the American Theatre. From this script, I take the following, from the description (next to Time:) at the top of each scene:

Act One
Scene 1: Afternoon.
Scene 2: Immediately following.
Scene 3: Five years later.
Scene 4: A few months later
Scene 5: [No time is mentioned, but it's clearly the same day as Scene 4.]
Scene 6: Two weeks later.
Scene 7: The following day.
Scene 8: Immediately following.
Scene 9: Early evening the same day.
Scene 10: Immediately following.
Scene 11: Immediately following.

Act Two:
Scene 1: Several years later.
Scene 2: A month later.
Scene 3: Late afternoon the following day.
Scene 4: Immediately following.
Scene 5: Later that night.
Scene 6: Immediately following.
Scene 7: [No time given.]
Scene 8: A week later.

Are those descriptions not in your script? Where in your script does it say "many years"? Is there an introduction by Lerner?

Now, if you want, you can interpet "Several years later" to mean more than three or four. I interpret it to mean three or four here. On dictionary.com, I find several defined as "being more than two but fewer than many in number and kind." So this is a matter of interpretation, but I seriously doubt that it's more than 6 or 7 at most. If it were, I think it's not "several."

And then there are the events described in "Guenevere." It seems to me that those cover a month or two. If you believe it covers longer, I can't argue with you about it. It's your interpretation.

So if you decide that it's 7 years, say, between the acts, then that ups the total timeline to 12 or 13 years. If you decide that years go by during "Guenevere," you can up it as high as you want. But my interpretation is that events there are moving quickly, out of Arthur's control. I think it's two months, at most.

"There's also Mordred to confound your timeline. Assuming that Arthur was 16 when he had sex with Mordred's mother and assuming that Mordred is at least 25 when he shows up on Arthur's doorstep, that's taking Arthur up to 41. Mordred would need at least a few years to sway the knights to his cause, so now Arthur is moving into his mid-40s. I'd still push him into 50 for the final battle, because it just makes logical sense."

Sean, you don't need to remind me about the Mordred thing. Who brought it up first in this thread? I did.

Even if you make Arthur in his early 40s, Michael York doesn't remotely across as being in is early 40s.

"Look at the themes in the play. If it's not about people coming to grips with the screw-ups in their lives and trying (and failing) to correct them before it's too late, then what is CAMELOT? A pretty show with a pretty score? That's too facile, even for Lerner and Loewe. If you notice, the score becomes more and more complex and uses far more minor chords in the second act, as things become more and more bleak for the three principals, building to the near completely discordant "Guenevere". And I would suggest that this was L&L's way of giving us a timeline, that they were using music to age their characters. And frankly, you dont get this kind of depth in a mere decade."

The music becoming more complex doesn't necessarily connote a huge passage of time, merely the increasing complexity and difficulty of their lives.

By the way, since your post seems to be addressed to me, you seem to be implying that I said or implied that the show was nothing more than "a pretty show with a pretty score." I don't feel that, and I don't know how you got that from anything I wrote.

As for "Silence," it's a beautiful, moving song. But it's kind of questionable in that (according to the timeline I copied above), we have this exchange between Lancelot and Guinevere approximately two weeks after they meet:

Lancelot: Jenny, I love you. God forgive me, but I do.
Guenevere: God forgive us both, Lance.

So she basically admits that she loves him after two weeks.

Sorry to break up this dialogue, but reading all the comments on this thread reminded me about a change in the ending that was prompted by the drama critic for the NY Daily News John Chapman, who raved about the show but had a suggestion to make the ending more optimistic than it was on opening night. The suggestion was followed by Lerner. The trouble with my failing memory is that I can't remember the specifics of the changes, except that it did make the ending more optimistic. Are there any more "old timers" out there that can help with this point? We're talking about 1960.

Also, as I said on a previous thread on this revival of CAMELOT, without a truly dynamic Arthur, this show, with its troubled book, is doomed to disappoint, regardless of its wonderful score. I don't see Michael York as being that Arthur.

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Updated On: 1/14/07 at 04:12 PM

"Well, we can tap dance around "several" all you wish, but I look at "several" to mean more than four. I take "several" to mean at least a decade. At least."

Begging your pardon but I'm going to "tap dance" around it a bit more. "Several years" means at least a decade?

Here are a few dictionary definitions of several:

From the Merriam-Webster web site:
"2 a : more than one b : more than two but fewer than many"

From dictionary.com:
"being more than two but fewer than many in number and kind"

From Webster's New World:
"consisting of a number more than two but not many"

I think that if Lerner had intended to suggest that more than a decade had passed, he would have made it clear and said so. Lerner could be a careless writer, but I don't think he would have used several to suggest at least ten.

"Sorry, I cant accept that this is a musical about the angst of twenty- and thirty-somethings."

Well, I can't force you to accept it. But what I would say is that two of these thirty-somethings are a king and queen whose actions affect an entire country. Heavy burdens weigh on their minds (including, surely, their childlessness, left undiscussed). As you know, they have a song about the relief they desire from those burdens.

I see nothing in the text to suggest that any of them is older than early to mid 30s at the end. With Arthur, I also see nothing to suggest that he's not—except Lerner's own descriptions and specifications.

Lerner gives us indications of how old Arthur and Guenevere are supposed to be at the beginning. Arthur is in "his mid-twenties," and Guenevere is "very, very young."

The casting in the original production gives us no reason to believe that Lerner felt a need to suggest any age older than mid-thirties at the end.

And in the film, which Lerner was closely involved with, no attempt was made to suggest a long passage of time through makeup to age the major actors, who (at the time of filming) ranged in age from mid-twenties (Franco Nero) to late twenties (Vanessa Redgrave, looking younger) to mid-thirties (Richard Harris).

I do wonder if there's anything in the text that you can specify that would clarify why you find it so hard to buy that they could be in their 30s at the end. I do see one thing that could be interpreted that way, Arthur's few lines about feeling old. I don't know how old you are, but if you're not there yet, I promise you that lots of people in their mid-30s sometimes feel old.

And living in the middle ages, even as a king in relative luxury but still without central heating, air conditioning, aspirin, NSAIDs, penicillin, chiropractors and massage therapists . . . well, you get the idea . . . as well as the stress of wanting to make life better for your people, could easily make you feel old before your time.

For kings and comoners, I think it's fair to say that mid-thirties in the middle ages was older than mid-thirties is now.

>> Begging your pardon but I'm going to "tap dance" around it a bit more. "Several years" means at least a decade?

To me. Clearly not to you. But put your dictionary aside for a moment and think logically about this: do you really believe that I am to accept that Arthur could do all this in a matter of a few years? (Oh, sorry, four or five.) England was a hopelessly splintered country, with fiefdoms all over the place. Some guys come along and says, "Hey, let's all get together and, by the way, I'm king" and everyone nods their heads in agreement and we move on to how happy everyone was with the Round Table and a unified England?

No.

Sorry, no. This took, even as the script says, several years to accomplish, and I dont believe for one second that we can pretend otherwise just to keep the characters at an age that you find an acceptable demographic to find an assured audience. Contrary to what you believe, while peasants had a shortened lifespan, the even basic creature comforts afforded royalty allowed them to live into their 50s and 60s, assuming they werent killed in battle or by duplicious relatives.

Know what's truly interesting about this dialogue? I'm looking at these people and seeing older-but-not-much-wiser folks who have lived their lives in fantasy and unrealized expectations and come to the end of the road still hoping for the best. You see the typical sitcom cast of Friends, perpetually young, never growing old because after all, in our Logan's Run society, one can never admit to being over a certain age lest it scare the horses.

And that saddens me, because it means that Broadway will now become like all the other so-called "popular" entertainments: geared to an audience of high school and college-aged. We've had discussions around here about the "dumbing down" of Broadway, and looking at this exchange, I'm starting to realize that it's not dumbing down at all, but gearing down. We want our shows about young! people and nothing else (which is why we're more likely to see a revival of Chorus Line right now than anything in the R&H canon), just as popular music and movies have now become almost the exclusive domain of the under-25 set. Sure, I realize there's a business reason for doing so, but I look at what it means and think to myself, Well, okay, so much for Broadway. We'll see more Disney and more rock concerts vaguely disguised as musicals, like Rent and SA. Shows with lead characters over 30 will no doubt slowly disappear because no one wants to see someone that old onstage. And your whole approach to Camelot simply underlines that theory: your resistance to the idea that, by the end of the play, these three people could be as impossibly old as T H White and Tennyson and everyone else who attempted the Arthurian legends would dare say they are simply brandishes that we are not to have old people on stage anymore, lest they be trotted out for their camp value. Shows with maturity? C'mon! It;'s Broadway!

Coming next season? An After School Rock special. Think I'm wrong? Guess again: it's called High School Musical. And it will be wildly successful. And more and more producers will look at it and think to themselves, Hey, why not? And we'll have more and more of these facile, underwritten, bright and shiny productions that cost more and more until we get to the point where we're paying three hundred bucks a seat to listen to someone sing the Alphabet Song.

That's the logical conclusion of your thesis. And it's very, very likely.

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The Times liked the cast, not the cuts or changes.

lc
LA Times Review