The Theater: New Musical on Broadway, Dec. 19, 1960

Camelot (book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner; music by Frederick Loewe; based on The Once and Future King by T. H. White) could scarcely fail to suffer from its huge pre-Broadway buildup, its reported $3,000.000 advance sale and, above all, the comparison with its Lerner-Loewe predecessor, My Fair Lady. But Camelot suffers from something more than ballyhoo; its real trouble is not its failing to live up to extravagant expectations but its not living up to itself.

The show—after a sprightly start—skitters irresolutely about in a diversity of moods on a variety of subjects, now proffering a dash of pageantry and now a dab of legend, now sending off Merlin early, now calling in Mordred late, here with some medieval jousting, there with a too modern joke. As a result, the comedy comes to sit a little uneasily while everything else is kept standing and shifting its feet. When at length there is no place for comedy and the story moves toward its stormy sunset and final clash of arms, what has been brokenly led up to is haltingly, almost frightenedly dispatched —is left to happen offstage, bulletined by a chorus, or never broached at all.

There are pleasant things, to be sure, in all of this, and there is one strong feat of acting. But there is no harmony of mood or certainty of movement; trying its luck with this thing and that, Camelot has made a fish pond of its story rather than a widening stream, and provides an evening that for all its sumptuous adornments seems curiously empty.

Things look bright at the outset when Arthur and Guinevere meet romantically and talk of themselves and marriage and sing of Camelot’s charms:

The winter is forbidden till December . . .

By order summer lingers through September.

The rain may never fall till after sundown, By eight the morning fog must disappear. And again, much later, as royalty asking What Do Simple Folk Do?—and whistling, singing, dancing by way of answer—they are appealingly gay. But too often Camelot’s gaiety grows flip or desperate, as its more serious scenes seem faint. And in time Julie Andrews, however engaging, seems no Guinevere, as Robert Goulet, however nice his voice, was never Lancelot; and King Pellinore becomes a chattering burden in the court and Morgan le Fay a darting disaster in the forest. Richard Burton, playing Arthur with a touch of inwardness beyond the call of musicomedy duty, alone ever seems three-dimensional—which only stresses how pasteboard are all the others and un-Arthurian is everything else.

The pleasant things include some stylishly medieval Hanya Holm processions and dances, a gleaming Great Hall investiture of knights, some scattered Lerner lyrics and Loewe songs. But Camelot falls short of sophisticated glitter and shorter of romantic glow.