Hie facet Arthurus Rex quondam Rex que futurus.
So read the inscription on King Arthur's tombstone, according to Sir Thomas Malory. The King would, at some indeterminate date, return to life and reign again; meanwhile, Here lies King Arthur the once and future King. It is doubtful that Malory or even Merlin himself could possibly have guessed just where Arthur would make his comeback: that he would appear on Dec. 3, 1960 on the stage of Broadway's Majestic Theater.
He is bringing something more than a Round Table with him. In the royal train are eight baggage cars full of scenery, more than 200 people, including 46 stagehands, 41 musicians and 56 actors. Above all, he comes with a pair of gifted squires, Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, now the best writer-composer team in the American musical theater. Lerner, the librettist, and Loewe, the composer, have already proved themselves worthy of the King. Their last try was My Fair Lady. They also did Brigadoon, Paint Your Wagon, and the much-Oscared film Gigi. They have now written and are still rewriting on the road Camelot, probably the biggest, most beautifully set, and most complex musical play yet attempted a spectacular effort to compress into one lyrical evening the essence of Arthurian legend.
Tryout Shades. On precarious Broadway, where months of work can end in one morning's disastrous reviews, some shows are too big to be destroyed by the critics and Camelot is bound to be one. Last year Rodgers and Hammerstein's The Sound of Music had so much pre-Broadway momentum (a then unprecedented advance sale of about $2,000,000) that it crashed through a barricade of unenthusiastic reviews, and will probably run for another two years. Camelot, with more than $3,000,000 worth of tickets already sold, may find reviews ranging from rave to grave, but in any event, the show will go on, and on.
By no coincidence, there is a My Fair Ladylike tone to Camelot's credits. Not only did Lerner and Loewe create the play, but Fair Lady's Director Moss Hart signed on again, along with Julie Andrews as Guinevere, Choreographer Hanya Holm, Set Designer Oliver Smith, Conductor Franz Allers. Beyond that, Lerner's libretto is drawn from one of the best novels of the loth and 20th centuries, T. H. White's The Once and Future King. And Arthur himself is arriving in the shape and voice of Wales's and the Old Vic's Richard Burton, who at 34 is numbered among the half-dozen great actors in the English-speaking world.