Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe’s Camelot never achieved the status of their My Fair Lady. But the 1960 musical about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, long cherished for its lush score and evergreen songs, attained a kind of mythic status, becoming a potent symbol of a certain political moment in our national history. Shortly after the assassination of J.F.K. in 1963, Jacqueline Kennedy told a reporter that her husband was a big fan of the romantic and idealistic musical and suggested, quoting a lyric from the title song, that the Kennedy era was, like Camelot itself, a “brief shining moment” that must never be forgotten.
I recently spoke with Bartlett Sher, director of the new Lincoln Center Theater revival of Camelot, currently at the Vivian Beaumont Theater. Sher previously helmed a string of deluxe musical revivals at the same theater over the past 15 years: South Pacific and The King and I, as well as My Fair Lady. His production of Camelot features a new book written by Aaron Sorkin, who previously collaborated with Sher on the successful stage adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird. Our conversation covered the origins of this production, how he and Sorkin sought to make Camelot speak to our current turbulent era of national politics, and more.
I understand that this production grew out of a concert version you directed at Lincoln Center in 2018. What inspired you to take on a full-scale production?
When we did the concert version, I was quite struck by the music. I thought the show was quite moving but the book wasn’t very strong. Traditionally, there’s been nothing but rewrites of the book. Each time they did a new tour of the show, they rewrote it. Directors are interpretative artists. You go to explore these pieces to see what they are and what’s their significance for today. Aaron Sorkin was interested, and the idea was, really, “What is a Camelot for our time?”
What did you discover about its relevance for today?
Camelot is based on T. H. White’s novel The Once and Future King, which is very much about the education of King Arthur. I think we were able to make a version where we could follow the boy king who fell into being a leader and explore what it means for that young king to take on this role, and then explore the politics around that. According to the legend, the period of King Arthur is a lot about justice, democracy, and ideas of equality, which sort of grew through the Round Table and through Arthur’s ideas. White’s book is also filled with lots of anachronisms. You couldn’t tell where it is quite set because it feels contemporary and it feels old.
You’ve talked before about being interested in stories that tell us who we are…
The divisions in the country and the questions of who we are in our own democracy had some impact on what we thought Camelot meant and what it was. A big theme of Aaron’s writing is his own romance with ideas about democracy and how we govern ourselves—questions we ask of ourselves about what kind of country we want. That is a major theme of Camelot. This show is a lot about leadership, and that’s a major question we’re asking right now. Arthur wants to engage the nobles in the ideas of democracy and equality versus their desires. It all comes apart on them as a result of Arthur’s own personal failings to some degree, and his wife’s. There’s the famous song “Fie on Goodness,” where they just lose it and they just don’t want to do it anymore—the thing falls apart out of its own internal fury. I think that we are in the middle of that kind of struggle over the same basic questions of what democracy is and how we get along.
To what extent did Sorkin toy with the original book’s dialogue?
I’d say the dialogue is about 90% new. People say we took out the magic, but there actually wasn’t very much magic in the original. [In this version], it turns out that people loosened the sword in the stone for Arthur [before he draws it out and claims kingship]. We wanted the idea that we could all be Arthur and that we all share that responsibility. We explored the political dimensions of Arthur’s leadership. That plot is balanced against the story of Guinevere, who he has married through political arrangement and the story of Lancelot, his devoted knight—a kind of love triangle. The two plots intersect and you get the kind of stuff of a musical.
In the musical revivals you previously directed at Lincoln Center, you were able to infuse a contemporary interpretation without having to rewrite the book. Would you say that Camelot is quite different in that respect?
To be fair, we did do rewriting on South Pacific. We added back in text and we restored a song that they had cut out of town. In the case of My Fair Lady, we put in substantial sections of Shaw’s Pygmalion for that book as well. We probably did the fewest changes to The King and I, but [that production] was a sort of rethinking in terms of how it had been [previously] portrayed as a kind of decorative, exotic world. We wanted to make it a more human and real world. So, with every show, there’s been work done but perhaps not as substantially as in this one. The other thing is that those shows were all big hits [when they were originally produced]. Camelot wasn’t a success when it first opened and probably needed the most work. We’re talking here about the text which held together this remarkable score.
Did you find it frustrating to not have a composer around to give you a new song when you were rethinking the book?
We don’t have any completely new scenes. We were just sewing it together more coherently. It’s a very delicate, respectful completing of the story and our audiences are quite responsive to that. They don’t seem to notice that there’s some, you know, flaw in the book or in the overall story.
When casting the lead roles, did you specifically look for younger actors?
Yes. Arthur is actually younger on purpose, and that’s closer to the book. I really could not have done this show without Andrew Burnap playing the king. He’s so incredibly great in it. I did My Fair Lady with Jordan Donica before and he’s exceptional as Lancelot. He has been with us in all of the workshops we did developing this. And Phillipa Soo, her part is the most difficult because we have built a Guinevere who has agency. She comes from a foreign country and has a sense of the world of her own. She’s smart and she helps Arthur make the Round Table. We really built a much more dimensional character than was ever in the original.
Your work at Lincoln Center has been noteworthy for the elegant look and feel of those productions. What did you envision for Camelot?
If Game of Thrones became a musical—a kind of world like that. For people who have seen shows that I have done before here, they were, some would say, quite elaborate. In South Pacific, you know, there was an airplane on stage and we pulled the deck back to reveal the orchestra. My Fair Lady had a very elaborate study which powered up and down into the space. In the case of Camelot, because it’s a somewhat simpler tale, I did a very different thing than I had ever done in that room. I elevated the deck so you can see the orchestra. I put in a rake and made it a very presentational performance space. Some people call that simple, but it’s definitely not simple on any level. It was a very interesting way of looking at it—like I was doing a Shakespearean history play, applying it to the history of Camelot.
It seems as though the minimalism of the set is complemented by the lavishness of the costumes. Is that a deliberate choice?
Right. But it’s actually an enormous set, just so everybody knows. It’s simple in that there aren’t a lot of changes, but it’s very big. And the costumes do provide, in the same way they do in Shakespeare, a lot of information about the family and their positions and all of that. And they summon this world of the Middle Ages. Even if you look at pictures of the original production, it was just a 1960s version of the Middle Ages. It wasn’t an accurate representation. We make up these worlds each time. And for the story that we’re doing now, it invents a sense of period, a sense of place that evokes this kind of far-away magical time.
You mentioned the orchestra reveal in South Pacific. That’s such a wonderful moment. Lincoln Center Theater has earned a reputation for exemplary sound and full orchestras. Is this a matter of pride for you?
It’s a responsibility as much as pride. If we’re going to do these shows, we have to do them as they’re meant to be done and honor the music. There are 30 pieces in the orchestra. It’s an incredible group of musicians, with Kimberly Grigbsy our music director. You really get to feel what it feels like—that balloon of sound as it comes to you [in the form of] Frederick Loewe’s great score. That’s something we feel responsible for, not just something we do.
Can you talk about enlisting fight director B.H. Barry for Camelot? He recently announced that this may be his last production after a 60-year career.
He was one of the first fight directors. I think he was trained by the guy who did Zefferelli’s Romeo and Juliet. One of the elements in the original show is a joust, which is very awkward—a battle where Guinevere tries to undo Lancelot. We changed that joust to a sword fight and then hired B.H. to do it. I’ve worked with him before on a couple of projects: Golden Boy at Lincoln Center, and Romeo and Juliet at the Met. There’s nobody better when it comes to a sword fight. He has all this experience. We built a whole scenario of the three knights Lancelot goes through. It was Aaron’s idea to have Arthur step into the fight. It’s really fun and really exciting.
Do you feel that you’ve achieved all that you wanted with this production?
Of all the shows that I’ve done here at Lincoln Center, this is the one I’m most proud of. It’s been one of our best accomplishments with an incredible cast and an amazing orchestra. Audiences are listening better than I have ever heard them listen to a story. It’s very powerful when they’re all locked into it, especially when they get all the way to the end. Some of the work in the second act, when the plot is flying from place to place to place, is very theatrical and very exciting.
Does Camelot resonate even more today than when you first started working on it?
When Arthur says [in the finale] that they’ll remember the stories, there’s a sense of tragedy of something ruined. That hits me all the time. [It’s about] our sense of ideals, about our country and where we’re going. And how will we remember this. Those questions are all much bigger than they were when we first did that concert.
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Arthur’s words about remembering the stories in the finale really resonate with me. There’s a profound sense of tragedy and loss, reflecting on ideals, our country’s direction, and how we’ll recall these moments. These questions have grown in significance since our first encounter with that concert.