Reviewed 9/23/05
Broadway Palm Dinner Theatre celebrates the start of their fifth season with not so much of a flourish than a half-hearted wave in their presentation of Lerner and Loewe’sCamelot. The opening Friday night started off lackadaisically, ran into an unusual problem, and finally raised itself to acceptable. It’s an inauspicious start to a company that has proven itself season after season.
The
evening’s first dip comes in the form of a Wart; Michael Haws,
that is, who makes an atrocious attempt at being a giggly, unnerved Arthur.
His initial portrayal screams of middle-aged man attempting to be youthful
and innocent, which is absolutely grating. Add in the immediate realization
that M. Seth Reines, the usually strong and dependable helmer
of many prior productions from Broadway Palms, has gone for the obvious with
his staging, and that sinking feeling sets in. Things get hopeful when beautiful
and velvet-voiced Julie Andrews-clone Jennifer Davis-Johnson takes
the stage and sweetly sings, but then Haws returns to spoil the moment. This
is followed by a silly-stately processional that screams stock direction, and
a scenery-chewing Merlyn as created by Tom Lawson who is stolen
away by a group of women who bare a strange resemblance to sea monkeys, and
one begins to hope for freedom.
Our prayers were answered that night: Thirty minutes in, the fog machines, which had been set into overdrive to create Camelot’s mist, somehow set off fire alarms. After being asked to exit, then quickly to return, and a fifteen-minute impromptu intermission, most of us returned to our seats (I did see a good amount that were left empty, including an entire table nearby). However, those who left missed out on a transformation worthy of Merlyn’s magic. Haws, when asked to be less Wart and more kingly, becomes engaging. There is never a spark between him and Davis-Johnson, but at least he follows an impressive character arc and grows into his role. Lawson returns from Merlyn’s banishment in a cave in the form of King Pellinore and becomes quite lively. It’s true that the direction never rises above the average, but other performers take the stage to cover for that and Patricia Wilcoxson’s undistinguished movement.
One of those performers is Michael Sample as
the French narcissist Sir Lancelot. Literally head and shoulders above the
others, he does not quite have the frame of Arthur’s greatest knight, but he has a strong, mellifluous
voice and an earnest quality. He fights to overcome Reines’ slicing of
the script that takes away an important rise in action elevating Lancelot and
believably beginning the romantic triangle. Nathan Albert’s appearance
in the second act as the evil bastard son of Arthur, Mordred, is thoroughly
enjoyable. Reines and Wilcoxson muff the movement during Mordred’s “The
Seven Deadly Virtues” by turning it into a skip around the stage, but
Albert remains hissable. Though asked to prance or skulk about the stage, the
ensemble does what it can to be more than dressing to Kristian D. Perry’s one-note
set while exhibiting some very pretty costumes by Mary Atkinson and Ruben
Permel.
One last problem that announced itself and gradually became an element that could single-handedly kill the evening was the consistent barrage of sour notes coming from JR McAlexander’s horn section. Someone seemed to have suffered a fat lip before the show, and the resulting blats made me want to blacken their eye as well.
I’m certain that BPDT will rebound with a much stronger, much more consistent production soon, but despite a few strong performances and the eventual redemption of Haws and Lawson, this production ultimately becomes lost in the choking mists.
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