Camelot

Camelot: Fort Worth Star-Telegram review

‘Camelot’ rides valiantly into Irving’s Lyric Theatre

Mark Lowry

IRVING — Composer Frederick Loewe and lyricist/librettist Alan Jay Lerner have one of the great achievements of American musical theater with 1956’s My Fair Lady, a remarkable adaptation of George Bernard Shaw’s play, Pygmalion. Four years later they did it again with Camelot, using the King Arthur legend as told in T.H. White’s novel The Once and Future King.

Camelot may not receive the same adoration as My Fair Lady, but Lyric Stage’s current revival makes the case that it should. That’s thanks to sensitive direction by Len Pfluger and musical director/conductor Jay Dias’ use of the original orchestrations by Robert Russell Bennett and Philip J. Lang with choral and dance arrangements by Trude Rittman. The 38-member orchestra captures the score’s nuances, including harp and English horn, under Dias’ lively conducting.

It begins on Cornelius Parker’s simple but striking set, of a circular platform (a reference to the round table) with a large tree (designed by Bob Lavallee) with heavy branches and roots, with Arthur (J. Brent Alford) and Guenevere (Kristen Beth Williams) meeting almost Adam and Eve-like (but clothed).

Sin will come — with a lot of gray area. The genius of White’s fantasy and this musical is how it looks at justice and power through the lens of compassion and forgiveness. Lancelot (Christopher J. Deaton) later arrives in the kingdom, and he and Guenevere slowly fall in love. It’s not instant, as we see in too many musicals, and we feel the attraction growing with each scene.

Fort Worth’s Alford starred in Lyric’s last Lerner/Loewe revival, of My Fair Lady, and once again shows his skill with an English gent, although Arthur is not the cad that Higgins is. He’s even more complicated in this portrayal.

Kristen’s father, James Williams, is a Lyric regular and is in the ensemble here. They share the stage for the first time in 19 years. She was terrific in the recent tour of A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder in Dallas, and her expressive face has more layers as the Lady torn between love and loyalty, heart and brain. She uses both. Her performance of the song Before I Gaze at You Again is as close to definitive as I’ve heard it (although there shouldn’t be any definitives in musical theater).

Deaton has grown in range at Lyric, no doubt thanks to Dias’ teaching and influence. Lancelot is often seen as a stiff character, and Deaton handles that with delicacy. Sonny Franks brings his welcome humor to the role of Pellinor (and handles the gorgeous English Sheepdog Charlie B., playing Horrid), while newcomer Brandon McInnis fills up on the scenery as Mordred. A trio of handsome Sirs, Drew Shafranek (a Fort Worth Opera apprentice), Clay Thompson and Trevor Martin, are welcome new faces and voices.

If you haven’t discovered musicals at Lyric, performed with full orchestra splendor, this is a great production for that introduction. It looks and sounds marvelous, and director Pfluger plumbs the depths of a story you think you know well.

Camelot: Dallas Morning News review

‘Camelot’ an aching look back at a 1960 classic and its ideals from Lyric Stage

Nancy Churnin

For those in the know about Lyric Stage’s nationally recognized mastery in restoring classic American musicals to their original glory, it’s no surprise that the little company that could has done it again in Camelot. Soaring voices of more than two dozen performers and a 38-person synthesizer-free orchestra under the tender, deft direction of Jay Dias flood the intimate Irving Arts Center space with a delicate weave of tenderness, longing and passion.

What does shock in Lyric’s 24th season opener is how the message of this 1960 Tony Award-winning Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe show is about so much more than the romantic triangle that propels the storytelling. Under Len Pfluger’s direction, the compelling cast cuts through the mists to a more hopeful time, with J. Brent Alford bringing heft to King Arthur as a man struggling against a rising tide of barbarity to change his world for the better.

As we wade our way through the ugliness of our political season and wars without end, it’s nice to remember that once people longed for a place called Camelot where, as Arthur puts it, “Might” is “for right” and “violence is not strength and compassion is not weakness.”

Lerner’s book, adapted from T.H. White’s The Once and Future King, is rich with foreshadowing. Arthur meets his intended, Guinevere, hiding in a forest, resistant to living in an unfamiliar kingdom with a man she’s never met. Broadway veteran and Mesquite native Kristen Beth Williams bemoans the romantic havoc she won’t get to wreak as a married woman in “The Simple Joys of Maidenhood.” Her light-hearted turn about inflicting pain on her swain will come back to haunt her in later years.

Similarly, when we meet the great warrior, Lancelot (Christopher J. Deaton), he’s extraordinarily impressed with his own purity and mastery in the funny “C’est Moi,” which includes admiring glances of himself in his polished sword. That’s the pride personified that will go before his mighty fall, when he sees Guinevere for the first time.

Williams dazzled with her comic finesse and exquisite voice in the national tour of  A Gentleman’s Guide to Love in Murder, presented by AT&T Performing Arts Center in August. As Guinevere, her expressive face has those on display, along with stirring emotions that convey the queen’s tormented desire for Lancelot, her husband’s closest friend.  Deaton, a Lyric Stage favorite, who recently took home Dallas Fort Worth Critics Forum honors for Grand Hotel, segues touchingly from the comedy of his first scene to the anguished, show-stopping, ”If Ever I Would Leave You” that he sings to Guinevere.

The supporting cast shines, too, with Kelly Silverthorn as the sweet-voiced Nimue, who enchants Arthur’s teacher, Merlyn (David Fenley) away, leaving Arthur on his own. Brandon McInnis makes an auspicious Lyric debut as the angry Mordred, who is determined to tear Arthur and his dreams apart. Sonny Franks brings welcome wit to the often befuddled King Pellinore, who arrives accompanied by his dog, Horrid, played by Charlie B., a shaggy, handsome Old English Sheepdog, making his theatrical debut.

The tale unfolds on Cornelius Parker’s simple set of a tree with twisted roots, suggestive of the Tree of Life in the Eden that inspired Camelot, with the tree on a circular piece that serves as a reminder of the round table and its ideals of friendship and equality.

Camelot is a must for musical theater fans because of the opportunity to experience the lushness of the show’s original Broadway orchestrations performed by the largest orchestra you will find in any musical theater pit.

But the insight into the tragic tryst that threatens the kingdom is something that should speak to everyone. This Camelot is a reminder that it’s easy to do the right thing when things are going well. The true test of character is doing the right thing when you’ve been hurt or are in pain. In a world where people are trashed and discarded for mistakes real and imagined, it’s a tonic to spend a couple of hours immersed in a story about good people with flaws, who never stop trying to do better.