Jousting At Memories

By WILLIAM A. HENRY III

TITLE: CAMELOT

AUTHOR: MUSIC BY FREDERICK LOEWE; BOOK AND LYRICS BY ALAN JAY LERNER

WHERE: BROADWAY AND NATIONAL TOUR

THE BOTTOM LINE: What seemed romantic and profound in the '60s is boring and silly now in this waxworks staging.

When Camelot was new, President Kennedy's fondness for the lyrics made its misty romanticism into a metaphor for his Administration. The egalitarianism of the Round Table and the script's palaver about the rule of law echoed public optimism about the United Nations and the potential of the Third World. We live in more cynical times, and Camelot now plays as just a hokey love triangle. That aspect is not too pertinent either: while Queen Guenevere fights off her adulterous yearnings toward Lancelot in keeping with the morality of the past, Britain's present Queen-in-waiting makes indiscreet phone calls and negotiates a separation.

Camelot might be fun for its lush score -- If Ever I Would Leave You, How to Handle a Woman and the title number -- if the current revival did not look so silly, ham it up so much and underscore so painfully the indefinition and lack of motivation in all the characters. Instead, the national touring production that opened on Broadway last week proves Stephen Sondheim's dictum that nothing dates faster than a musical.

Robert Goulet, the original Lancelot, plays the Richard Burton role of the nobly cuckolded Arthur, a perennial boy transmuted into a saint. At 60 and looking it -- especially when moving as if in a back brace -- Goulet is two decades too old. Patricia Kies gushes out the girl Queen's politically incorrect ignorance and submission while appearing old enough to play Hamlet's mother. As Lancelot, Steve Blanchard sounds like the voice-over from a cartoon and cavorts with an odd hip swivel, as if ready at any moment to start dancing the twist. James Valentine's doubling of Merlyn and Pellinore is a camp extravaganza of twitches, nods, snorts and doddering. The best to be said for this Camelot is that it attracts audiences who do not often go to the theater. The worst to be said is that it is hard to imagine their ever wanting to come back.