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the_dala at 12:03am on 16/07/2007
the_dala at 12:03am on 16/07/2007So I have tons of things to reply to and do (like beta - I'm sorry, Rachel! I'll get to it right after this) but it's been sort of a busy weekend and right now I'm all OMG CAMELOT.
I saw one of my favorite musicals, ever in life, with one of my favorite actors, ever in life, at beautiful woodsy Wolf Trap. I saw Michael York onstage! I was going to go stalk him after, but Mom didn't want to. Anyway, he was every bit of awesome I had imagined. He is not, granted, much of a singer (and got ahead of the orchestra in a few places), but for me the role of King Arthur has never required much of a singer. Besides which, Michael York doesn't have to sing great because he's already Michael fucking York and that is QUITE enough. Also, Guinevere and Lancelot had gorgeous, soaring, perfectly trained voices to compensate.
Okay, as much love as I have for the movie (and Richard Harris), it is so much better as a stage show. SO MUCH BETTER. I had read the book of the musical, but years and years ago, so I did not realize this until tonight. It zips along from scene to scene, song to song. For example, "If Ever I Would Leave You" doesn't suck onstage because they don't have to do an interminable montage of the True Adulterous Love of Lancelot and Guinevere in every bloody season. Just about the only thing I prefer in the movie is the jousting scene - for one, because there's no jousting onstage, obviously (and the fight choreography was pretty craptastic); two, because Vanessa Redgrave and Franco Nero acted the hell out of that scene. "Live, I beg you, live..." "He lives - he lives" and the blue blue eyes - gets me every time.
But! Rachel York's Guinevere is far superior. The character is less passive - something tells me that her grabbing a sword and putting up a strong fight in the discovery scene is a modern addition to the script, but I love it. She gets every nuance of Guinevere down pat, from her early innocence to her painful repressed love (blessedly less angsty than the film version, or at least angsty in less time) to her final moments of -- I was going to say despair, but she plays Guinevere with her shorn hair as past despair, past heartbreak. A survivor. Yeah, I was pretty much smitten with the whole performance. James Barbour is...well, he's very tall and handsome and has a great voice, but it's hard to do much with the character of Lancelot as written here. He spends most of the first act as a punchline and then the audience is supposed to take a 180 during intermission and accept him as an actual person. Barbour hammed it up to great effect in the first part, and was left floundering in the second, but not through any real fault of his own, I didn't think. And lastly, the actor playing Pellinore reminded me so much of John Cleese that I kept forgetting it wasn't actually him.
I much prefer the stage version in which the second act opens just a month after the tournament, rather than having the affair go on for years as it does in the film - makes me far more sympathetic to the characters. Actually, the conversation between Guinevere and Lancelot in her bedchamber - just before they're discovered, and seemingly the first and only consummation of their feelings - had a very modern feel to it. I honestly don't remember how it was originally written, and perhaps I'm being too harsh on the movie's second half - I often stop watching at intermission because it gets so damned depressing (and the love triangle rather tedious). I will have to check this out.
Anyway. If it comes to a theatre near you, I highly recommend it - fantastic music, beautiful stage design, some great acting, a solid entertaining production. And MICHAEL YORK.
Now my task is to convince Mom to go see West Side Story next month. No Michael York, sadly, but on its own merits a better musical that Camelot. After that I just need to see 1776 and Cabaret onstage, and I'll be all set as far as my favorite musicals go (except for Funny Girl, which I could never imagine without Babs).
I saw one of my favorite musicals, ever in life, with one of my favorite actors, ever in life, at beautiful woodsy Wolf Trap. I saw Michael York onstage! I was going to go stalk him after, but Mom didn't want to. Anyway, he was every bit of awesome I had imagined. He is not, granted, much of a singer (and got ahead of the orchestra in a few places), but for me the role of King Arthur has never required much of a singer. Besides which, Michael York doesn't have to sing great because he's already Michael fucking York and that is QUITE enough. Also, Guinevere and Lancelot had gorgeous, soaring, perfectly trained voices to compensate.
Okay, as much love as I have for the movie (and Richard Harris), it is so much better as a stage show. SO MUCH BETTER. I had read the book of the musical, but years and years ago, so I did not realize this until tonight. It zips along from scene to scene, song to song. For example, "If Ever I Would Leave You" doesn't suck onstage because they don't have to do an interminable montage of the True Adulterous Love of Lancelot and Guinevere in every bloody season. Just about the only thing I prefer in the movie is the jousting scene - for one, because there's no jousting onstage, obviously (and the fight choreography was pretty craptastic); two, because Vanessa Redgrave and Franco Nero acted the hell out of that scene. "Live, I beg you, live..." "He lives - he lives" and the blue blue eyes - gets me every time.
But! Rachel York's Guinevere is far superior. The character is less passive - something tells me that her grabbing a sword and putting up a strong fight in the discovery scene is a modern addition to the script, but I love it. She gets every nuance of Guinevere down pat, from her early innocence to her painful repressed love (blessedly less angsty than the film version, or at least angsty in less time) to her final moments of -- I was going to say despair, but she plays Guinevere with her shorn hair as past despair, past heartbreak. A survivor. Yeah, I was pretty much smitten with the whole performance. James Barbour is...well, he's very tall and handsome and has a great voice, but it's hard to do much with the character of Lancelot as written here. He spends most of the first act as a punchline and then the audience is supposed to take a 180 during intermission and accept him as an actual person. Barbour hammed it up to great effect in the first part, and was left floundering in the second, but not through any real fault of his own, I didn't think. And lastly, the actor playing Pellinore reminded me so much of John Cleese that I kept forgetting it wasn't actually him.
I much prefer the stage version in which the second act opens just a month after the tournament, rather than having the affair go on for years as it does in the film - makes me far more sympathetic to the characters. Actually, the conversation between Guinevere and Lancelot in her bedchamber - just before they're discovered, and seemingly the first and only consummation of their feelings - had a very modern feel to it. I honestly don't remember how it was originally written, and perhaps I'm being too harsh on the movie's second half - I often stop watching at intermission because it gets so damned depressing (and the love triangle rather tedious). I will have to check this out.
Anyway. If it comes to a theatre near you, I highly recommend it - fantastic music, beautiful stage design, some great acting, a solid entertaining production. And MICHAEL YORK.
Now my task is to convince Mom to go see West Side Story next month. No Michael York, sadly, but on its own merits a better musical that Camelot. After that I just need to see 1776 and Cabaret onstage, and I'll be all set as far as my favorite musicals go (except for Funny Girl, which I could never imagine without Babs).
ecstatic
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