A few years ago, it was all the rage in the regional theater realm to take famous old musicals and scale them down for smaller stages and more compact orchestras.
These days, it’s just as common to see full-blown, Broadway-scale productions — “Anastasia”! “My Paris”! — on regional stages. The Westport Country Playhouse, which has proven that it can do a show like “Into the Woods” without resizing or revising, is now reviving the scale-down trend with a purposely condensed “Camelot.”
David Lee’s adaptation of Alan Jay Lerner’s original 1960 book for the show (which was based on T.H. White’s novel retelling of the Arthurian legends “The Once and Future King”) lets a nine-actor ensemble serve as the lead players and — in skillfully designed commedia dell’arte masks — the chorus. Lee banishes five “Camelot” characters — Pellinore, Merlin, Lady Catherine, Nimue and Ozama — from the kingdom entirely.
Watching this wizened, wizard-less “Camelot,” I’m reminded of a scaled-down “Guys & Dolls” at the Long Wharf Theatre in 2004. It was so severely minimalized that it could have been dubbed “Guy and Doll,” just as this show could be renamed “CameLittle.” At the Long Wharf, you missed seeing a bustling New York street and a crowded Havana nightclub. In Westport, when Arthur and Guenevere ask “What Do the Simple Folk Do?,” you wonder instead where they are.
This “Camelot” simply lacks majesty. It’s hard to rouse yourself for a royal medieval adventure tale when there’s no pomp or pageantry. The revised musical score may only leave out one full song (“Follow Me”) but more importantly it ditches the overture and opening parade/march. The eight-piece band relies on a single French Horn for its brass section.
A lot is lost when you reduce “Camelot” to a troupe of troubadours. The title song, which lists numerous wonderments of this enchanted land, seems sheer fantasy when the show’s main backdrop is the silhouette of a tree.
Is anything gained? The central love triangle among King Arthur, Queen Guenevere and Sir Lancelot is sensitive and vulnerable — but only up to a point, since Lance’s over-the-top “perfection” and hubris haven’t been modified.
As Arthur, Robert Sean Leonard (from “Dead Poets Society” and TV’s “House”) downplays any notion of heroism or regal bearing, imbuing this muttering monarch with nervous tics and a slouching stance. He’s so withdrawn that the love affair between Guenevere (a reserved and resplendent Britney Coleman, who played Rapunzel’s Mom in that aforementioned WCP “Into the Woods”) and Lancelot (a strapping Stephen Mark Lukas, from “Damn Yankees” at the Goodspeed Opera House in 2014) makes perfect sense.
Director Mark Lamos brings out the human drama in the piece, and Steve Orich’s orchestrations turn some of the show’s soaring melodies into intimate torch songs. But the legend of King Arthur has always been about much more than tender feelings. Without the scenes of Merlin tutoring the young Arthur, the monarch’s coming-of-age process is missing. Without more knights standing around, he doesn’t seem like much of a leader. Most troublesome, this adaptation has a major reduction in “Camelot”‘s comic relief and comic-book villainy — major characteristics of T.H. White’s book and Lerner’s script. When the evil Mordred appears in Act II (played by Patrick Andrews, the steely-eyed apprentice from “Red” at the Westport Playhouse earlier this season), a sleepy show about love and valor finally takes the turn into action and adventure that should have been there at the outset.
Knocking back “Camelot” to simpler sets and calmer dialogues is a worthwhile exercise, in keeping with the long tradition of sparse, introspective plays like “Hamlet” and other examinations of the loneliness inherent in great leadership. But essential elements are missing. This is a “Camelot” that can not defend its own boast that “there’s simply not a more congenial spot for happily ever aftering.”
“CAMELOT” by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, adapted by David Lee and directed by Mark Lamos, is at the Westport Country Playhouse through Nov. 5. Tickets are $40 to $85. 203-227-4177, westportplayhouse.org.
