What’s a Camelot without a little magic? Aaron Sorkin works up an answer to that question in the new Lincoln Center Theater production of the 1960 Lerner & Loewe musical, and the result is an adaptation that seems at every turn to be pleading its case for its own relevance.
Where the West Wing creator conjured a real sort of writerly sorcery in 2018 with his transformation of the beloved property To Kill A Mockingbird into a new, relevant and thrilling stage work, his efforts this time around often seem strained in their attempts to drag Camelot into the 21st Century.
In its way, Camelot, at least as we’ve come to know it until now, is, in its stodgy and fitful way, a musical as emblematic of the 1960s as the more obvious generation-defining theatrical statements of the era (“Gimme a head with hair!”).
Camelot, with its “might for right” social idealism and tested faith in political heroism, was ever-so-ripe for Jacqueline Kennedy’s picking as a post-JFK myth-maker, a salve for the walking wounded.
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