Camelot Reviews

Peggy Outon from Pennsylvania

WHERE WAS THE MAGIC? WE WAS ROBBED!

I had so looked forward to seeing Camelot. This production does not work…the set is much too spare, but the main problem is the script was determined to make the lead characters ordinary…Arthur did not pull the sword from the stone because it was loose - phooey! he did call Guinevere his business partner - ouch! They had no chemistry…he was much too young and slight a figure. Morgan Le Fay as a scientist, not a sorceress…really? It was a thin and too often joyless rendering of what has had pathos and beauty…and boy, is it long! The script is really pretty terrible….Aaron Sorkin has written some of best TV ever, but I hope he will stay away from theater classics…

Bertha Bauer from New York, New York

A DISAPPOINTING CAMELOT

This is a joyous, overly long, amateurish performance of a nuanced and beautiful musical. And, btw, a musical means just that, a lot of singing and communication through song. There was very little dance, Arthur was too young and slight and lack passion. Soo as Gueneviere was feisty but overly snarky. The saving moment was Lancelot. Skip it and watch the Richard Harris performance on UTube

William M. from Boston, MA

WHAT A DRAG

The music dragged, the script got too preachy at times (thanks Aaron Sorkin), and I agree with a previous comment about some of the leads sounding like they delivered lines that were learned rather than lived. The minimalist set didn't help set the mood, either. That said, the first act worked well and the singing was competent but the second act needs...work.

Mark from New York, New York

SADLY IT WAS BORING AND FLAT.

I agree with all the reviews posted above. The casting is odd. King Arthur looks like Evan Hansen. No Gravitas. The pacing is torturous. Slow and plodding. The arc of their love triangle is jarring and comes from left field. The magic of Camelot is missing. This feels like a really great area college production.

Wes Blauss from New York, New York

IN THE BLEAK MIDWINTER

It opened in bleak midwinter, black-and-white, minimalist set, snow, and black robes. I thought, "Oh, wow! Medieval Wales! This could be interesting." (My wife thought, "Oh, gross! They've drained the color out of a favorite musical." We were both misled. It turned out there was no love triangle, no great romance, no real tragedy. Arthur and Guinevere's political marriage is a business arrangement, and while Lancelot lusts for her, she resists until the moment Mordred captures them in the act. The songs (still beautiful if you overlook Fie on Goodness, Fie, which was always grotesque) clash with the lack of romanticism. One of my favorites, What Do the Simple Folk Do? turns out not to be a last ditch attempt between two souls trying to hold onto a love gone south, but a dare from Guinevere who thinks that her business partner may claim to come from humble roots but is really just another nobleman pretending to have the common touch. Richard Harris and Vanessa Redgrave broke our hearts. These two are simply failing to communicate. I did enjoy some of the updating, inc. the excision of Nimue (no clue what they were singing as Merlyn died, it didn't sound like the original lyrics) and the possibility that Morgan Le Fey was a scientist ahead of her time (my wife didn't like that either, and, of course, Morgan wasn't Mordred's mother, Morgause was!)). There's a touching final scene between Arthur and Guinevere that suggests they loved each other from the start but couldn't give voice to their love, but we didn't believe a word of it. Nowhere in the preceding action did we see a moment when she was anything but snarky and he was anything but the butt of too many jokes (about the French, about 99,999 people loosening the sword in the stone ahead of him (Clever!), about being knocked out... "I'm not quite dead yet!") We DID think the leads all had wonderful voices and the acting was adequate to the script, but we came expecting a production akin to South Pacific which we rate as the best musical theater we've ever seen/heard in NYC. We left disappointed, and our 14-year-old grandson has no clue why the Arthur-Guinevere-Lancelot triangle is considered the greatest of the medieval tragic love stories. He may never read The Once and Future King now! Now that's a tragedy.

from New York, New York

KING ARTHUR AS PLAYED BY CHANDLER FROM “FRIENDS”

Oh, where do I start? Sometimes I leave a show and say, “oh well, that wasn’t so great. Let’s go to dinner.” But honestly, I felt completely insulted by this show, and it was torture to sit through. First of all, updating the book with current snarky and sarcastic dialogue for some lines and scenes, but keeping the traditional Arthurian language for other scenes made absolutely no sense. When Arthur said “yeah, people say that I’m underwhelming in person,” I was like, yup, that’s about right. He played Arthur as an absolute doofus, like a more simple-minded version of Chandler from Friends. And Phillipa Soo, who had an amazing voice, played Guinevere as a shrew. She treated Arthur horribly, and he didn’t seem to like her either. At the end of the play, Guinevere and Arthur both confess that they each fell in love with each other from the moment they met. Really? Then WHY did that it take all of those years for them to acknowledge that? She was rude and horrible to him from the very beginning, and never indicated in the least bit that he that she was in love with him. Instead of her love inspiring this grand idea of a round table, and “might for right,” in this production she supposedly comes up with the idea herself while she treats Arthur like an idiot who can’t think for himself. And without that real love that they should have had for each other, the tragedy of her affair with Lancelot just doesn’t work. Also, I didn’t believe for a moment after King Arthur acted like such a bumbling idiot, that he would all of a sudden know how to fight the unbeatable Lancelot — with two swords no less. (And why did he fight Lancelot in the first place ? It should have been the third Knight, which is what causes Guinevere to ultimately fall in love with Lancelot when he brings the Knight back to life.) There was absolutely no chemistry between Lancelot and Guinevere. The staging consisted of Guinevere walking to a corner and looking out at the audience wistfully while speaking to Lancelot standing ten feet behind her. It was soap opera direction at its worst. And supposedly Morgan Le Fay slept with Arthur as a 15 year old boy and then gave birth to Mordred? First of all, that’s very creepy. And all of these years king Arthur wrote letters to her EVERY WEEK giving her money and inviting them to live in the castle, but she threw the letters away and gave the money away to charity? For what reason? And what the heck was him having to write down 10 numbers on a piece of paper all about? The sets were nonexistent, the colors were drab, and the acting was amateurish. I felt like I was watching a high school production gone awry. I want to wash my brain of this production so I can love Camelot again.

Bill from New York, New York

A TOTAL MISS, BUT ODDLY ENJOYABLE.

Saw last night (3/28). Must admit I enjoyed the first act, largely because it was just so good to hear that score again after all these years. Having said that, I agree with most of the above comments. The nasty, unlikable Genevieve( but great voice) the wimpy king, the absurdity of stripping the magic out of a medieval legend, the preachy, heavy-handed politics of all of Sorkin’s work shoved into a delightful ancient myth. The spectacular, witty score had to do all the work, but they stripped out two beautiful songs, and then replaced them with utterly forgettable noise. Sorkin has no idea what he’s mucking around with. . Then I remind myself that I did actually enjoy the first act.

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