skygiants | (no subject)

I saw the new production of Camelot at City Center, with the book entirely rewritten by Aaron Sorkin!

Proposition: Aaron Sorkin thinks Camelot (1960) is a bad musical.

The way this version of Camelot works is that Aaron Sorkin & his colleagues have kept all the original songs and rewritten the book around them.

Unfortunately, Aaron Sorkin does not seem to like the songs. Aaron Sorkin thinks the songs are all a bit silly and drag the characterization in ways he doesn't want this to go. This means that every time a song happens, it is either preceded by a character making ironical remarks, interrupted by a character making ironical remarks, or followed by a character making ironical remarks. Guinevere is constantly interrupting Arthur's performance of "Camelot" to tell him that "Camelot" is a stupid song, after which Arthur protests, at length, that it's a metaphor. "What Do The Simple Folk Do" is preceded by an argument in which Guinevere tells Arthur that calling people 'simple folk' is offensive.

Proposition: Aaron Sorkin is eager to garner praise for writing a girlboss!

Guinevere. Guinevere. Guinevere wears leather pants and threatens Arthur with a knife. Guinevere has read Voltaire and is ready to explain to Arthur that hereditary nobility is bad, actually. Guinevere sings "The Simple Joys of Maidenhood" and then tells Arthur that he knows nothing about war. Guinevere brings equality to the court. Guinevere can beat Arthur at chess while reading a book with her eyes closed. Guinevere patiently leads Arthur to all of his ideas, which she had first, because Guinevere is The One With The Brain Cell! Guinevere also teaches the ladies of the court to shimmy with their hips during the lusty month of May. But Guinevere would never, herself, be lusty; Guinevere might be passionately attracted to Lancelot but she will never do anything about it; at least, not until she makes one slip, one night, because of her burning jealousy over Aaron Sorkin's stand-in Arthur, and who could blame her for that!

(And I want to be clear, Philippa Soo is performing her heart out, she truly is trying her best to be who Guinevere is in any given scene, she truly is giving her all to songs that she then immediately has to turn around and disclaim, Philippa Soo it is not your fault.)

Oh, Guinevere is also French.

Proposition: Aaron Sorkin is eager to garner praise for writing a girlboss, the second -

I will also take a minute to talk about Morgan Le Fay. Morgan Le Fay is here, for, I believe, the first time in Camelot history. Why? Who KNOWS, but she is Arthur's first love, and Mordred's mom, and she's a SCIENTIST with a PERFECT MEMORY and she can predict the future, but not with magic, just with science. Arthur goes to visit her because of a fake letter from Mordred, which is why Guinevere gets mad and jealous and sleeps with Lancelot. Arthur does not do this on purpose. Arthur is not being challenged about the law, or having a crisis of conscience about the law, or honestly struggling much in any way, tbh; Arthur has not had to face that his project is inherently doomed to fail in any way that matters. Arthur is just gullible and has not properly internalized that Morgan Le Fay Does Not Need A Man.

Proposition: Aaron Sorkin thinks he understands The Once And Future King better than Camelot (1960) understands The Once And Future King, and he is wrong.

The program that we got explains: this is a real Camelot. This is a human Camelot. This is a Camelot about ideas and politics! This is a Camelot with no magic! And OH BOY is that impossible to forget. I estimate about 30% of the dialogue is taken up by characters carefully explaining how things that are integral to the plot and themes of the narrative -- Arthur pulling the sword from the stone; Merlin seeing the future; Lancelot raising the dead -- are in fact not in any way magical and totally explicable by science. The sword was loosened by 9,999 hands before him. Merlin had lived so long that he could predict the future by guesswork, and he was not taken by Nimue, he is dead dead dead. Arthur, on the other hand, was never dead at all.

(Yes, it is Arthur that Lancelot 'raises from the dead,' after they have a swordfight that Arthur almost wins but then gets distracted by a bald eagle. Don't worry, it's really just a mild concussion! No, there's no emotional weight to it and it adds no depth or significance to their relationship. Yes, I am aware that bald eagles are a North American bird.)

Sorkin is right that The Once And Future King is a political book, and that the original musical could engage more with its politics. But The Once and Future King also holds the weight of its politics in its emotions and in its desperation and in the way people struggle towards the impossible -- and in the way that its flashes of the numinous illuminate that struggle. This version of the musical takes out almost every instance of the numinous and replaces it with a lecture or a quip.

It also does this with most of the dialogue in the show that is focused on the ways in which people actually care about each other.

Proposition: Aaron Sorkin is afraid of human affection

Part of this is simply the staging -- it's a big empty stage and everyone stands ten feet away from each other at all times and spouts rhetoric. The program explained that people are calling this production "sexy Camelot." WHO IS CALLING IT THIS. There is nothing sexy about this production! Nobody is allowed to approach each other! Lance and Arthur express no physical affection except an occasional awkward shoulderclasp. Lance and Gwen get one kiss, and then fall chastely into a prop bed next to each other for one night, after which Gwen tells Lance she never felt the same way about him that he did about her! Gwen and Arthur also get one kiss, at the very end, when it is revealed that - surprise! - after years of presumably-chaste partnership, they have been in love with each other all along, because Arthur is Aaron Sorkin's stand-in and Gwen is Perfect and Lancelot is just a big hot jock so who cares about him anyway --

Sorry. I'm getting away from staging here and into dialogue. Sorkin has really carefully excised all the dialogue that indicates that anybody actually has big personal feelings about each other, and replaced it with quips and rhetoric. The thing that for me was really damning is the fact that he keeps almost the entirety of Arthur's "Proposition" monologue at the end of Act I, barely changes any of the actual text, but he cuts any lines that refer to how the trio feel about each other:

Proposition: If I could choose, from every woman who breathes on this earth, the face I would most love, the smile, the touch, the voice, the heart, the laugh, the soul itself, every detail and feature to the smallest strand of hair-- they would all be Jenny’s. Proposition: If I could choose from every man who breathes on this earth a man for my brother and a man for my son, a man for my friend, they would all be Lance.

WHY WOULD YOU CUT THIS. Nothing lands if you cut this! It's not the personal vs. the political if there's no personal! Instead what we get is Arthur explaining twenty times that Lance didn't literally raise him from the dead. Okay, fine. I get it. Magic doesn't exist and there's no space for miracles and the thing that dooms Camelot is not the eternal struggle between human love and loyalty and the unattainable ideal of virtue, but one mistake Jenny and Lance made one time, because of a miscommunication.

For all its flaws -- and there are many -- Camelot (1960) really believes in, invests in the idea that its principals love each other, without irony, and I've never felt fonder of the original show than I am tonight.

(ETA: also

genarti has now posted a much more thorough write-up!)