Camelot

Camelot, at Trinity Rep
Gratuitous Violins rating: *** out of ****

It's Sept. 27, 1940, the middle of the Blitz. To escape German bombing raids, 117,000 London residents have taken refuge in tube stations deep underground, including one where a troupe of actors is putting on Camelot.

This is a Camelot that tells the story of King Arthur and the knights of the Round Table without castles or medieval costumes. The actors wear 1940s-era street clothes and set designer Eugene Lee has built a dark and dingy train platform cluttered with mismatched furniture. A five-piece band tucked in a corner provides the music.

I have to give artistic director Curt Columbus credit for coming up with a fresh concept for a 50-year-old musical to open Trinity Rep's season.

But I realize Camelot's shortcomings: the plot is a little convoluted and in between the songs the story can drag. It's a 2 hour and 40 minute show and at times, I really felt the length.

Luckily, I enjoyed the performances and the humor that infuses this production.

Stephen Thorne was appealing as King Arthur, a reluctant monarch who establishes the Round Table, with its ideals of honor and justice, "to fight for right, not might." Rebecca Gibel made for a glamorous, self-assured Queen Guenevere and Joe Wilson Jr. was terrific as the charming but pretentious Frenchman Lancelot.

And I've always loved Lerner and Loewe's score: "If Ever I Would Leave You" and "Camelot" are especially beautiful. Wilson was hilarious with "C'est Moi," arriving on a motorbike, bounding into the audience and handing out 8 x 11 glossies of himself.

For Americans, Camelot, which opened on Broadway in 1960 and ran for 873 performances, has become indelibly connected to the presidency of John F. Kennedy.

But the musical is based on T.H. White's The Once and Future King, written between 1938 and 1941. Columbus says White "was using Arthur, Merlyn, Guenevere, and Lancelot as voices of civilization and hope for the continuance of British identity in the face of the German onslaught at the beginning of the Second World War."

That point is brought home through a newsreel featuring British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, the WWII-era posters that line the wall of the subway platform, sounds of bombs overhead that occasionally cause plaster to fall from the ceiling.

Despite all that, with one exception I didn't feel much of an emotional tug during Camelot, a sense that this musical was being put on during a terrifying, devastating time. I don't know, maybe in return for giving up the majesty I was expecting a little more Blitz spirit.

The exception was the final scene, which was beautifully staged and had me close to tears. Still even then, hearing Arthur's iconic words I wasn't thinking of the perseverance of the British people but of a young president cut down and a nation plunged into mourning.

Maybe that other connection is simply too ingrained.

Tweeting JFK's road to White House

For a week now I've been watching another kind of drama unfold via Twitter. The Kennedy Library in Boston is re-creating John F. Kennedy's race for the White House in 1960 by tweeting events from his daily schedule.

Last Saturday the Massachusetts senator announced his candidacy for president, on Jan. 2, 1960. By today's campaign standards, he was literally a Johnny-come-lately. You can watch a newsreel report here.

Kennedy's campaign-related events during that first week included an appearance on Meet the Press (still on the air!) and lunch on Madison Avenue with the editors of Look magazine (no longer published).

Interestingly, he also met with an Episcopal bishop and Methodist minister from Delaware, perhaps indicating how early in the campaign the Roman Catholic Kennedy was confronting questions about his religion.

For a 1960s buff like myself, this is all pretty interesting stuff - and such a great way to look back, in a half-dozen or so 140-character chunks per day.

There are all kinds of little social and cultural details you can pick up on, too - like the dinner Kennedy attended at the National Women's Press Club on Jan. 6, 1960. The National Press Club was still a male-only bastion. Women weren't admitted until 1971.

I'm looking forward to the first Kennedy-Nixon debate, in September. And speaking of Richard Nixon, the vice president announced his candidacy on Jan. 9, 1960. It would be great if the Nixon Library did something similar on Twitter.

The 1960 presidential campaign was a watershed - the first in which both candidates were born in the 20th century, the closest electoral vote since 1916, the first televised debate, the first election in which Alaska and Hawaii participated.

It's so hard to believe 50 years have passed.

For one brief shining moment

Maybe it's because I'm going to see the touring production of Spamalot on Sunday, or maybe it was Barack Obama getting the endorsement of Caroline and Ted Kennedy, but I was thinking about the Kennedys and the origin of the Camelot myth and what it says about the theater.

I always thought about John F. Kennedy and Camelot in terms of politics. It never occurred to me before this week, but the connection may have been a watershed event in the history of American theater as well. I mean, how many times since then has a reference to a Broadway show entered our cultural vocabulary in such a meaningful way? Not many, I bet.

Here's the background: "A week after the assassination, Jacqueline Kennedy spent four hours talking to the journalist Theodore H. White. She acknowledged that before going to bed most evenings, Kennedy would listen to the melodramatic Broadway song ''Camelot'' on his antiquated Victrola. His favorite lines were: ''Don't let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment, that was known as Camelot.''

Ok, maybe "Aquarius" from Hair is officially the last cultural reference taken from the theater, as kind of a shorthand for the youth culture of the mid to late '60s, but I don't think it has as much resonance 40 years later.

And I can't think of a Broadway show, or any recent musical, that could evoke the same feeling today. Sure, Wicked was featured on an episode of Ugly Betty, and on the Sopranos, they talked about going to see Jersey Boys. But it's not the same.

The way Camelot became shorthand for the Kennedy years reminds me of something I heard on the PBS series Broadway: The American Musical. Show tunes once were America's Top 40. And for one brief shining moment, a work of musical theater had the power to capture the popular imagination.

Passing the torch

I'm not sure whether it'll have much of an imapct, but I think it's pretty interesting that Caroline Kennedy endorsed Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination.

For a progressive Democratic politician, being anointed the heir to John F. Kennedy is pretty much like finding the Holy Grail. I mean, how many people over the years have told Caroline that they got into politics because of her father? Countless, I'm sure. And every one of them, I'm sure, would love to have had her blessing. (Poor John Forbes Kerry even had the same initials. It didn't help).

I was struck by the forcefulness of Kennedy's opinion piece in Sunday's New York Times. Here's the quote that really stood out: "I have never had a president who inspired me the way people tell me that my father inspired them. But for the first time, I believe I have found the man who could be that president — not just for me, but for a new generation of Americans."

Ok, I realize that Obama is running against Hillary Clinton, not Bill. Or maybe he is. Still, I couldn't help but wonder how Bill Clinton must have felt when he read that. Given Clinton's closeness to the Kennedy family over the years, he must have thought, Why Obama and not me? I mean it's like the unkindest cut of all. Just think of the ubiquitous picture of a teenage Clinton, delegate from Arkansas to the Boys Nation convention in July 1963, shaking hands with President Kennedy.

Here's what Bill Clinton said in 1998 at a dinner for the Kennedy Library Foundation: "I think I should begin by saying that for me this is not an obligation, it is an honor, not only because like every other member of my generation I was inspired by President Kennedy but because Hillary and Chelsea and I have been profoundly moved by the uncommon kindnesses of this family to ours."

I was at Clinton's first inauguration, in 1993, and I remember standing in front of the United States Capitol on a very cold January morning, in the largest crowd I'd ever been in. It was so exciting to be there, to be a part of history, to see the Capitol all decked out in red, white and blue bunting. There was a certain timeless quality to the whole ceremony. Someone standing near me said that her parents had been at Kennedy's inauguration, in January 1961.

Of course, everyone can recite a line or two from JFK's inaugural address: "Ask not what your country can do for you." "The torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans." Those phrases are taught in school, they're part of our collective memory, right up there with "I have a dream" and "Fourscore and seven years ago."

When Clinton spoke, I was really straining for some sentence, some phrase, that I would always remember, that would become a part of history, just like John F. Kennedy's speech. But that moment never came. I don't remember one word of what he said. In fact, the only quote from Clinton that anyone can remember is, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman."

I can still remember snippets of Obama's keynote address to the Democratic National Convention in Boston in 2004. There was his slightly self-deprecating tone: "the hope of a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him, too." He talked about how we're not Red state America or Blue state America, but simply the United States of America: "We coach Little League in the Blue States and yes, we've got some gay friends in the Red States." And there was a nod to faith: "It is that fundamental belief: I am my brother’s keeper. I am my sister’s keeper that makes this country work."

After Clinton's inauguration, I figured that politicians simply didn't make memorable speeches anymore. Whatever you think about Obama as a candidate, he does renew my faith in great political oratory. People who compare him with Jesse Jackson are off base. I've heard Jackson, and he's a mesmerizing speaker. But his cadence and delivery come from the church. Obama sounds more like a traditional politician, but a politician in the JFK mold - someone who uses language to unite and inspire Americans.

The more I think about it, I can certainly see why Caroline Kennedy felt inspired to make her endorsement - and why she never felt so inspired to say the same things about Bill Clinton. (And don't get me started on Clinton's signing of the vile Defense of Marriage Act or "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," a move that enshrined discrimination as public policy).

Kennedy wrote that as a mother of three teenagers, she wants a president who will inspire young people. The generation that's coming of age today, she says, feels hopeless and disengaged. What's important is not so much that Obama reminds her of her father, but her sense that Obama represents a generational shift similar to the one that occurred when JFK succeeded Dwight Eisenhower. (If Obama is elected, for the first time in my life I'll be older than the president of the United States.)

I bet that contrast will become even more stark if Obama ends up as the Democratic nominee and John McCain wins the Republican nod. You go to McCain's Web site, and there's a giant picture of McCain. The first image you see on Obama's Web site is the youthful candidate surrounded by his loving, attractive family. I mean, look at that picture. This could be Kennedy/Nixon all over again.

As someone who's always been fascinated by the sixties, the endorsement made me think of a time in the early part of that decade when we were confident of our place in the world, the future looked limitless and America was on the cusp of change. (Go watch Hairspray right now). Are we there again? I don't know. But it's intriguing to think about.