Broadway Musical Review—“Camelot” Revival

Camelot

Music by Frederick Loewe; lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner

Book by Aaron Sorkin, based on Lerner’s original book

Directed by Bartlett Sher

Opened April 13, 2023

Vivian Beaumont Theatre, 150 West 65th Street, NYC

lct.org

Phillipa Soo in Camelot (photo: Joan Marcus)

Lerner & Loewe’s Camelot has not been seen on Broadway in 30 years—I saw Robert Longbottom’s modestly silly staging at the 2012 Glimmerglass Festival, with a wondrous trio of leads: David Pittsinger’s King Arthur, Andriana Chuchman’s Guenevere and Nathan Gunn’s Lancelot—and Bartlett Sher’s uneven new staging, hampered by Aaron Sorkin’s new book, likely won’t help its cause. 

Despite being set in England during the Middle Ages when there was an obvious line of demarcation between exalted royals and plebian subjects, Camelot is not all earnest seriousness and masculine swordplay. Monty Python and the Holy Grail and its musical offspring Spamalot have made us think the original is eternally dated. Yet Lerner’s book and lyrics nicely balance drama, romance and humor, while Loewe’s songs are—as always—impossibly tuneful. But Sher and Sorkin, who have gone to great lengths to “improve” the show, only intermittently succeed. 

Sorkin has squeezed much of the juice out of a story that was simply, for all intents and purposes, a romantic triangle among Arthur, his queen Guenevere and the French Knight of the Round Table, Lancelot. Sorkin has also eliminated the magic, literally: old wise man Merlin is no longer a wizard, Morgan le Fay—the witch-like aunt of Mordred, Arthur’s illegitimate son—is now a scientist as well as Mordred’s mother, and Guenevere is a brash, enlightened heroine.  

Such “improvements” are often no worse than what’s in Lerner’s original book, but they’re not much better either. And Sorkin’s dialogue—which has the rat-a-tat rhythms of his TV and theater scripts—is too sitcomish, too crudely clever. In fact, swaths of this Camelot sound as if they were created by an Aaron Sorkin ChatBot.

Director Sher seems somewhat hamstrung by Sorkin’s book; interactions and conversations play out at the exaggerated pace of The West Wing or The Newsroom, which is at further odds with these characters. At least the sweep of Camelot’s setting remains, thanks to Michael Yeargan’s apt set design, Jennifer Moeller’s vibrant costumes, Lap Chi Chu’s expressive lighting and Marc Salzberg and Beth Lake’s imaginative sound design. 

Andrew Dunlap is a personable if somewhat callow Arthur and Philippa Soo is a beguiling and lovely-sounding Guenevere. As Lancelot—subbing for Tony-nominated Jordan Donica at the performance I saw—Christian Mark Gibbs has a muscular voice that’s appropriately reined in on the evergreen “If Ever I Would Leave You.” 

Too bad the show’s immortal title tune is made almost perfunctory by Sorkin and Sher at the beginning, as Guinevere rolls her eyes and complains while Arthur describes his kingdom’s metaphorical glories. But even they can’t “improve” it when it returns, battered but defiant, at the end.