The Revival of Camelot at NYC's Lincoln Center and How It's Sending the Message of Political Hope

On May 8, 2008, PBS broadcast a complete limited-engagement performance of the classic Lerner & Loewe musical "Camelot" with a new and refreshing cast. This musical, of course, was the 1960 Broadway smash where Julie Andrews became a Broadway superstar, Robert Goulet managed to acquire a lifelong theme song and Richard Burton managed to prove that talk-singing in a musicals works just as well as belting a note. In the new, one-week revival at Lincoln Center, NYC (starring Gabriel Byrne as King Arthur and Marin Mazzie as Guenevere), it's probably no coincidence that it's being staged in the thick of arguably one of the most important Presidential campaign seasons of all time. The parallels in "Camelot" to what people want again in America makes its timing all the more interesting...and should be a demand for this production to go longer than just through May 10.

That's not to say there haven't been other revivals of "Camelot" here and there since the original Broadway production closed on the eve of the President Kennedy assassination in 1963. Most people have associated the original production with the Kennedy administration because John F. Kennedy listened to the soundtrack album at night in the White House as well as his term being considered a dream everybody attained--yet ultimately couldn't sustain. Even after the dream was shattered, though, a movie was made of "Camelot" in 1967 (starring Richard Harris) and various stage revivals during the 1980's and 90's when some elements of Camelot were restored in America.

Despite many thinking we'd never find it again during the 2000's--a U.S. tour started of the musical in 2007 with Michael York playing King Arthur that's still going today. However, having a major new re-staging of the musical in NYC is quite significant, because it hasn't been staged there since a brief revival starring Robert Goulet in 1993.