On Stage:
SHIPLEY, JOSEPH T.
On STAGE Camelot: Legend And Enchantment By Joseph T. Shipley Camelot. Book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner. Based on The Once and Future King by T. H. White. Music by Frederick Loewe. Directed...
...Although the creators of Camelot get lost in the legend, they come out with some of the enchantment...
...but all we see are knightly jealousies and bickerings...
...The Greek dramatists knew that there are a hundred plays in an epic...
...Directed by Moss Hart...
...Costigan, at the end of the revolution, concentrates on the spirit of a Dublin girl whose lover—-and love— have been killed, and shows us...
...Some of the early songs and speeches poke fun at the whole story...
...It is interesting to see two plays set in the same time and place as different as Sean O'Casey's The Plough and the Stars, briefly and effectively revived at the Phoenix, and James Costigan's Little Moon of Alban...
...The actors have to ham a lot, the authors seem to sham a lot, but the musical called Camelot is buoyant and well-dressed...
...Lancelot goes on a quest, but on his return doesn't even mention it...
...Lancelot, on arrival, is an insufferable prig, proclaiming his purity in such superior tones that when he rides to a tourney he is laughed at as "the sermon on the mount...
...And we are expected to flow in emotional sympathy with the three noble and loving characters—Arthur, Lancelot and Guenevere—thus brought to ruin by the machinations of the villain...
...At the Majestic Theatre...
...This heavy-handed humor lapses to plain silliness when Modred wins the help of Morgan Le Fey by promising her all the marshmallows, fudge and hard candy she can eat...
...Little Moon of Alban, By James Costigan...
...in her nursing of the English lieutenant, the resurrection of the human spirit...
...O'Casey shows the disorder of the opening Irish revolution through the inhabitants of a Dublin slum: the meaningless misery and the protests of the socialist who foreshadows the author's leftist leanings...
...The opening scene makes a charming introduction: Arthur wondering timidly how to accept the arranged marriage, then Guenevere running away from her escort, equally timid and seeking help from the stranger who is the king she has to wed...
...All that is left of the great legend is a personal tale of doomed love and dastardly betrayal...
...In the second place, the authors couldn't decide how to handle the royal and ideal theme...
...Presented by Mildred Freed Alberg...
...nothing "to right wrong," to build a better world...
...They begin with the marriage of Arthur and Guenevere and then give us the founding of the Round Table, the coming of the faultless Lancelot, the desperate but "pure" love of this knight and the Queen, the intrusion of Modred (a bastard in both senses of the word), the flight of Lancelot and Guenevere, and the collapse of the Round Table...
...sometimes gay—as in "The Lusty Month of May" and "Then You May Take Me to the Fair," in which Guenevere teases three knights into a joust with the boastful (but unbeatable) Lancelot...
...The procession of knights and ladies is partly satiric and wholly attractive, no expense having been spared on the colorful costumes that weave in quaint parade and dance...
...It is silly because if she can build an invisible wall around Arthur, how much more magic would it take for her to concoct a few sweets for herself...
...The Plough and the Stars...
...At the Phoenix Theatre...
...But there is much to enjoy in Camelot nevertheless...
...There are two items to be disposed of, regarding what this play fails to be, before one can look at what it is...
...Julie Harris helps make the scenes with the Englishman tender and poignant, and John Justin keeps vivid the troubles of the Englishman who left his love in Ireland...
...Yet this silliness must be the basis of a sober end: Her invisible wall keeps Arthur away while Modred leads the knights to watch Lancelot's innocent farewell to the Queen, which they interpret as an adulterous assignation...
...The play even provides King Arthur—as Shaw provided Caesar—with a bumbling Britisher in the best muddlingthrough English tradition...
...Presented by Theatre Inc...
...In the first place, it tries to do too much and therefore succeeds in doing too little...
...Lerner and Loewe try to pack the whole story into one...
...In the final radiance of the girl's reciprocated love there is something of the exaltation that shines through great drama...
...At the Longacre Theatre...
...These are spoken of...
...The music is sometimes challenging —as in the title song and the knights' later rebellious "Fie on Goodness...
...By Sean O'Casey...
...To do this with Camelot would be unfair to Malory, Tennyson and the others that have dealt with the epic of King Arthur...
...Such a condensation perforce omits the glory and the ideals...
...The buoyant quality is sustained especially by Richard Burton as Arthur, with an excellent speaking as well as singing voice, and Julie Andrews, fetching and imperial as Guenevere...
...Produced by Lerner, Loewe and Hart...
...The producer of several of this season's hits has suggested that critics begin their reviews with the things about a play that they like...
Vol. 44 • January 1961 • No. 1
