Camelot dir. by Bartlett Sher (review)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Reviewed by: Camelotdir. by Bartlett Sher Kevin J. Harty bartlett sher, dir. Camelot, New York's Lincoln Center 2023 revival of the Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe 1960 musical with a new book by Aaron Sorkin. Previews from 03 9; opening night: 04 13; running time: 2:45. Arthur's back!—not because England finds itself once again in peril, but because Aaron Sorkin, who has revised Alan Jay Lerner's original book for Camelot, thinks America is. Camelothas always been a problematic musical. Even T.H. White, whose The Once and Future Kingwas the musical's source, recognized the inherent problem with the show: it's a musical tragedy, not a musical comedy. The story of the original 1960 production is legendary. The show opened in Toronto on its way to Broadway. The cast was notable. Richard Burton—he of the speaking voice like no one else's—was cast as Arthur. Julie Andrews played Guenevere. Robert Goulet, making his Broadway debut, was Lancelot. Roddy McDowell appeared as Mordred. On opening night in Toronto, the show ran twice as long as it was supposed to—testing the bladder control of everyone behind and in front of the curtain. Noel Coward is alleged to have quipped that the Canadian tryout of Camelotwas 'longer than Götterdämmerung… and not nearly as funny!' Otherwise, reviews were positive, but with the universal comment that the show needed drastic editing. Alan Jay Lerner wrote the original lyrics and book, which were paired with the music of Frederick Lowe; Moss Hart directed. Soon into rehearsals, Lerner was hospitalized with a bleeding ulcer, and Hart had a heart attack. (One must wonder if the show is cursed: Alan Sorkin suffered a stroke while working on the rewrite of Lerner's original book for the current Lincoln Center production.) The show moved to Boston, and cuts were made; the show opened on Broadway on 3 December 1960, and more cuts were made—and would continue to be made during the long Broadway run. The official Broadway cast album includes two songs subsequently cut from the show: 'You May Take Me to the Fair' and 'Fie on Goodness.' Reviews of the Broadway production were mixed, but a showcase of songs from Cameloton The Ed Sullivan Showcaused ticket sales to skyrocket, and the show ran for 873 performances, and won five Tony Awards. Revivals were staged in London and elsewhere, with the show returning to Broadway in 1980–1981 and 1993. A film version directed by Joshua Logan was released in 1987 with Richard Harris as Arthur, Vanessa Redgrave as Guenevere, Franco Nero as Lancelot, and David Hemmings as Mordred. Camelotwas assured a lasting imprimatur when Jacqueline Kennedy [End Page 191]allowed in an interview in Lifemagazine that the musical had been among her late husband's favorites. The current Lincoln Center production is directed by Bartlett Sher whose restaging of musicals such as South Pacific, My Fair Lady, and The King and Ihave rightly been greeted with critical acclaim. Andrew Burnap's Arthur has less gravitas than Burton's or Harris's, but then he is considerably younger than either actor was when each took the part. Burnap's Arthur seems less thoughtful, flightier—he is a boy king on an unsteady path to manhood. When Merlyn (Dankin Matthews) dies, Arthur wonders 'what the hell am I supposed to do now!' Phillipa Soo's Guenevere is more feisty than either Andrews' or Redgrave's. She knows how to keep Arthur in place and seemingly on a short leash, and she is also smarter than he is. She puts a slightly cocky Arthur seeking to impress her in his place when she points out that he was only able to pull the sword from the stone because it had been loosened for him by all those who had previously tried to do so. Jordan Donica's Lancelot bellows, and his deep baritone takes over the stage when he first appears climbing up previously invisible stairs at the back of the stage singing 'C'est moi!' He is a man to Arthur's boy, and their contrast will only...
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.262 | 0.277 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".