The New York Philharmonic, which had great success last year with lyricist Alan Jay Lerner and composer Frederick Loewe's "My Fair Lady" (1956), celebrated "the lusty month of May," this year, with a staging, at once lusty, lavish, and thoughtful, of the creative team's "Camelot" (1960), with a cast of theater, opera, television and film performers, conducted by Paul Gemignani, directed by Lonny Prince, and headed by Gabriel Byrne, Marin Mazzie, and Nathan Gunn, in the roles of King Arthur, Queen Guenevere, and Sir Lancelot du Lac, created on Broadway by Richard Burton, Julie Andrews, and Robert Goulet. The second of five hearings at Avery Fisher Hall, on May 8, which was telecast on the Live from Lincoln Center series, is reviewed here.
"Camelot," after T. H. White's novel "The Once and Future King," concerns the legendary King Arthur's establishment of a perfect kingdom, guided by "a new order of chivalry, where might is used only for right," his knights seated at a roundtable so that no one individual should be at the head of it. After an optimistic first act, Arthur sees his dream dissolve in the second, his ideal realm undone as his Queen and his closest friend, Lancelot, fall hopelessly, guiltily in love; his son, Mordred, and Mordred's sorceress aunt, Morgan le Fey, make malicious mischief and engender chaos; and the once gallant knights, now destructive, turn against each other. The hopeful inception and concept of Camelot so inspired President John Fitzgerald Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy (later Onassis) that the Kennedy regime, which began a month after the show opened in New York, was nicknamed Camelot after their favorite musical, the country's dream of a new order dashed abruptly by assassin Lee Harvey Oswald's bullets on November 22, 1963.
Director Price and the performers highlighted the contrast between the two leading men, with Byrne portraying a modest Arthur, given to deliberating and worrying, as he strove, despite his insecurities, "to be the wisest, most splendid, most heroic King of all," and Gunn, cocksure as the almost too perfect, accomplished Lancelot, sporting black leather pants that became him exceedingly well. Even their approaches to the music reflected their difference, Byrne tentatively half singing, half speaking his nervous "I Wonder What the King Is Doing Tonight;" proud title song "Camelot;" and more perplexed than misogynistic "How to Handle a Woman," and Gunn lavishing his resonant baritone on his enumeration of the virtues that commend him in "C'est Moi;" sweet, bilingual madrigal to Guenevere, "Toujours j'ai eu le même voeux;" and rhapsodic romanza "If Ever I Would Leave You."
As Byrne's Arthur was a bundle of nerves as he anticipated meeting his Queen, so were Mazzie's Guenevere's nerves as jangled as his, as she expressed dread of marriage and regret for the end of youth in a warmly sung, lyrical "Simple Joys of Maidenhood." Brimming with vitality, Mazzie led dancers and the rest of the company in a lively production number, choreographed by Josh Price, marking the start of "The Lusty Month of May," and in a rousing quartet, encouraged valiant knights vying for her favor, Christopher Sieber as Sir Dinadan, Will Swenson as Sir Sagramore, and Marc Kudisch as Sir Lionel, promising them "Then You May Take Me to the Fair." Mazzie and Byrne charmed us as they puzzled over ways to lift their sagging spirits in "What Do the Simple Folk Do?"
The real fire, though, was generated not by the marriage of Arthur and Guenevere but by the illicit love of Lancelot and the Queen. She hated the bold knight on sight, branding him "overbearing and pretentious," and baiting him with, "Have you jousted with humility lately?" when he claimed he had never lost a battle, so it was inevitable that she would fall for him. Realizing, though, that their love could not continue, Mazzie sought their separation in a now wistful, now plangent "Before I Gaze at You Again," but with emotion, the pain in her voice palpable, soon confessed "I Loved You Once in Silence."
Reviewed here last fall when he was one of the leads in Brooklyn's Gallery Players' "Yank!" the gay musical with a World War Two setting, Bobby Steggart played Mordred, Arthur's disruptive bad boy son, costumed by Tracy Christensen as a punk with multicolored hair, in high-heeled boots, studs and sleeveless shirt. Steggart blithely aired Mordred's irreverent credo in "The Seven Deadly Virtues" and accused the lovers of treason when he caught them together.
In a notable cameo as the gluttonous Morgan le Fey, bribed by Mordred with a huge Hershey's chocolate bar to pull a prank on Arthur, Fran Drescher, signature New Yawkese delivery on display, presented an earthy royal presence markedly different from Byrne's and Mazzie's dignified ones.
Byrne's Arthur was counseled by contrasting veterans Stacy Keach, as Merlyn, his tutor, commanding until wooed away by soprano Erin Morely, as the spirit Nimue, casting her spell with a dulcet "Follow Me," and Christopher Lloyd, as dizzy King Pellinore, tenaciously questing after an elusive 'Beast,' until he takes up residence in Arthur's castle and, pulling no punches, can tell him, "You sired a skunk," in appraising the repellent Mordred.
Rick Sordelet directed the fight scenes here and mention must be made of the Jousts, in which groups of dancers vividly became horses, bucking and strutting and hoisting their riders, Lancelot and his rivals, aloft.
Having embraced Guenevere as Queen and Lancelot "as my brother and as my friend," and in conflict because "I love them, but they have betrayed me," Arthur can, magnanimously, forgive them and bid the former a tearful farewell, but Mordred and the knights who support him have no compunction about turning the Queen over to the crowd that condemned her in a furious "Guenevere" and would see her burn at the stake. Mordred challenged Arthur, "Let her die, your life is over; let her live, your life's a fraud ... Do you kill the Queen or kill the law?" In the bittersweet ending, Byrne's Arthur concluded, "Leave the decisions to God" and let the lovers escape, but, even as he saw his dream of Camelot crumble, dubbed a young boy, Tom of Warwick, played by Rishi Mutalik, a knight and commanded him, in the finale's reprise of the title song, to keep alive the memory of the "brief shining moment" of the kingdom's idyllic existence.
James Noone designed the settings and Paul Miller, the lighting.
At this writing, remaining performances of "Camelot" were scheduled for May 9 at 8 pm and 10 at 2 and 8 pm, with tickets from $65 to 225 available at the Fisher Hall box office at Lincoln Center, by calling 212/875-5656, or visiting www.nyphil.org. The Philharmonic delves into theater music again on May 20 at 7:30 pm in "Broadway's Greatest Showstoppers," conducted by Marvin Hamlisch and starring Kristin Chenoweth, Raúl Esparza, Michel Bell and J. Mark McVey. Ticket are priced from $29 to 99 for this evening of music from "Annie Get Your Gun," "My Fair Lady," "Show Boat," "Les Misérables," "Evita," "Carousel," "Company," "She Loves Me," "Two on the Aisle," "Candide," "West Side Story," and "A Chorus Line."
The Philharmonic turns to opera in concert with Puccini's "Tosca," led by Music Director Lorin Maazel and starring Hui He, Walter Fraccaro, and George Gagnidze on June 12, 17 and 19 at 7:30 pm and 14 at 8 pm. Tickets start at $39. Performances of Falla's "La vida breve," under Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, from October 16 to 21, and Strauss' "Elektra," under Maazel and starring Deborah Polaski, from December 4 to 13, figure into next season's schedule.
