#51
Posted: 1/15/07 at 11:52am
First, to answer the question from Eric, the cuts were instituted approximately three months into the original run.
Also, dblenn, after the cuts were put in, the show ran two hours and 35 minutes, not including intermission. So the show probably ran 2 hours and 45 minutes at its Broadway opening, plus intermission. It was at its out of town opening in Toronto that it ran four hours plus.
"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?"
Thanks for the suggestion that I should think logically about this. Without your having made that suggestion, it would never have occurred to me that I should logically.
So now I'll make a change and try to think logically.
Logic seems to suggest that words have defined meanings. That's why we call them definitions. And dictionaries are there to help codify what words mean. Because if we all choose to give words whatever meanings each of us chooses, communication becomes difficult.
So while it's fine, I guess, if you want to decide that several means at least ten, for most of the rest of us, that's not the meaning.
Now if you want to say that "I'm thinking of the upward end of the definition, the 'fewer than many' part," that's OK. But you seem to be saying that several means at least ten. For you. (Maybe that's not what you meant, but it's what you wrote in that earlier post.) But since that's not the generally accepted definition of several, I'm guessing it's not what Lerner meant. And we are dealing with what Lerner wrote. White, Tennyson, Mallory, etc., are fairly irrelevant.
Looking at the text of that show, as published by Random House in a version approved by the author, it seems that at the beginning of the show, Arthur is accepted as king. We don't know how big his kingdom is. But unless I'm missing something, I see nothing to suggest that he spends any time, during the period depicted by the show, trying to unite a group of fiefdoms. This may be historically incorrect or untrue to the source material, but this isn't the source material.
What does the script tell us that Arthur does? He starts the Round Table, tries to get knights from around the country to join it, and once they do, encourages them to use their power for the greater good. Just how much is accomplished beyond that is left vague.
And the script tells us that he does one other thing: He establishes one court of law. One courtroom in his capital.
I think that these things could be done in five years. In fact, they could be done in one year.
Maybe I've forgotten something else that's in the script. If so, please remind me.
Meanwhile, I am still wondering, since you never answered, where in the script it says "many years."
"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."
Where to start? First of all, I never said anything about lifespan. From what I've read, if you managed to live to adulthood, you had a pretty good choice of living into your 50s or 60s, even if you were a peasant. So I never would have said that Arthur and Guenevere would not have lived to those ages (and I didn't say that). What I said was that life was tough, which it was, and that this might have made them feel old when they were still what we would consider youngish. (This is the second time in this thread that you have attributed to me a statement that I never made.)
Second, I never said (or thought) anything about "keep[ing] the characters at an age that [I] find an acceptable demographic to find an assured audience." (This is the third time you have basically put words in my mouth, misrepresenting what I wrote. Are you planning to go into politics? Because it sure seems as if you've been studying the Karl Rove book of tactics.)
Again, I'm looking at what the authors seem to have intended based on the evidence. I have no interest whatsoever in whether a production of Camelot is a financial success.
If anything, in many cases, including this one, the producers' idea seems to be to get a name who might bring in audiences, even if he is clearly a good deal older than the authors intended the character to be.
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!"
Again, this isn't White or Tennyson, this is Lerner and Loewe. So if you think that Broadway isn't hospitable to the idea of older people onstage, your beef isn't with me or with anyone else around today, but with Lerner, Loewe, and Moss Hart (as the casting of Burton was Hart's idea).
Also, dblenn, after the cuts were put in, the show ran two hours and 35 minutes, not including intermission. So the show probably ran 2 hours and 45 minutes at its Broadway opening, plus intermission. It was at its out of town opening in Toronto that it ran four hours plus.
"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?"
Thanks for the suggestion that I should think logically about this. Without your having made that suggestion, it would never have occurred to me that I should logically.
So now I'll make a change and try to think logically.
Logic seems to suggest that words have defined meanings. That's why we call them definitions. And dictionaries are there to help codify what words mean. Because if we all choose to give words whatever meanings each of us chooses, communication becomes difficult.
So while it's fine, I guess, if you want to decide that several means at least ten, for most of the rest of us, that's not the meaning.
Now if you want to say that "I'm thinking of the upward end of the definition, the 'fewer than many' part," that's OK. But you seem to be saying that several means at least ten. For you. (Maybe that's not what you meant, but it's what you wrote in that earlier post.) But since that's not the generally accepted definition of several, I'm guessing it's not what Lerner meant. And we are dealing with what Lerner wrote. White, Tennyson, Mallory, etc., are fairly irrelevant.
Looking at the text of that show, as published by Random House in a version approved by the author, it seems that at the beginning of the show, Arthur is accepted as king. We don't know how big his kingdom is. But unless I'm missing something, I see nothing to suggest that he spends any time, during the period depicted by the show, trying to unite a group of fiefdoms. This may be historically incorrect or untrue to the source material, but this isn't the source material.
What does the script tell us that Arthur does? He starts the Round Table, tries to get knights from around the country to join it, and once they do, encourages them to use their power for the greater good. Just how much is accomplished beyond that is left vague.
And the script tells us that he does one other thing: He establishes one court of law. One courtroom in his capital.
I think that these things could be done in five years. In fact, they could be done in one year.
Maybe I've forgotten something else that's in the script. If so, please remind me.
Meanwhile, I am still wondering, since you never answered, where in the script it says "many years."
"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."
Where to start? First of all, I never said anything about lifespan. From what I've read, if you managed to live to adulthood, you had a pretty good choice of living into your 50s or 60s, even if you were a peasant. So I never would have said that Arthur and Guenevere would not have lived to those ages (and I didn't say that). What I said was that life was tough, which it was, and that this might have made them feel old when they were still what we would consider youngish. (This is the second time in this thread that you have attributed to me a statement that I never made.)
Second, I never said (or thought) anything about "keep[ing] the characters at an age that [I] find an acceptable demographic to find an assured audience." (This is the third time you have basically put words in my mouth, misrepresenting what I wrote. Are you planning to go into politics? Because it sure seems as if you've been studying the Karl Rove book of tactics.)
Again, I'm looking at what the authors seem to have intended based on the evidence. I have no interest whatsoever in whether a production of Camelot is a financial success.
If anything, in many cases, including this one, the producers' idea seems to be to get a name who might bring in audiences, even if he is clearly a good deal older than the authors intended the character to be.
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!"
Again, this isn't White or Tennyson, this is Lerner and Loewe. So if you think that Broadway isn't hospitable to the idea of older people onstage, your beef isn't with me or with anyone else around today, but with Lerner, Loewe, and Moss Hart (as the casting of Burton was Hart's idea).
