[music]

Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart live from the WNYC studios in Soho. Thank you for sharing part of your day with us. A little bit of housekeeping, you may have heard that we had planned to have on documentary director Sam Pollard to discuss his new documentary about the Negro Leagues Baseball teams, the history of it, they called the league. Unfortunately, due to circumstances beyond his control, Sam was not able to join us today so we hope to reschedule and talk about that great documentary. In the meantime, we are going to bring you an encore presentation of an interview.

These are the last two weeks to see the Tony-nominated revival of the beloved learner and low classical musical Camelot. It will close on July 23rd. When Tony Award-winning director Bartlett Sher decided he was going to tackle Camelot he knew he wanted a reworked book. Two Academy Award-winning screenwriter and playwright Aaron Sorkin, who made some bold choices. The current version now playing at Lincoln Center, Arthur was a reluctant king who pulled the sword from the stone not because of any magic. It is suggested he was the right man at the right time that possibly thousands of other people had loosened at first.

Arthur's a bit naive, well-meaning, has a sense of humor, and after he meets his wife by arrangement, the feisty and savvy Princess Guenevere, she helps him see that he could use power for good. Together they could create a kingdom based on equity where all people are treated equally. Guenevere is played by Tony Award nominee Phillipa Soo. Arthur's decision to create a roundtable of knights who would uphold and exemplify this idea of fairness does not go as planned. The Old Guard isn't crazy about this whole equality thing, being knights and all.

Then there's the arrival of Lancelot a dashing French fighter eager to prove himself to Arthur and to Guenevere who he begins to love. With a cast of 27 and a 30-piece orchestra, Camelot is playing at the Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center through July 23rd. Earlier this year, I spoke with star Philippa Soo, and director Bartlett Sher about the production. I began by asking Bartlett why now was the right time for a Camelot revival.

Bartlett Sher: Well, it's very strange, I did My Fair Lady over five years ago, and in the middle of that, we did a gala performance of Camelot to raise money for Lincoln Center. At that point, we used Lin Manuel-- it's his mother's favorite musical and one of his favorite musicals so he played Arthur for us in that special performance. When we did it, I really felt like it was a very special show but traditionally, as a show, it's had amazing music and a somewhat troubled book, which isn't totally as clear from 1960s.

I thought, well, and we had a very great support of the Lerner and Loewe estate that we would embark on trying to make a Camelot for today, one in which we could talk about the questions and issues that face us, and at the same time, integrate this extraordinary music. It's been an absolute joy working on. I really appreciate your description of it at the beginning, because it captured a lot of the special things in there that we really love about the piece.

Alison Stewart: Philippa, what was your first introduction to Camelot?

Phillipa Soo: My first introduction to Camelot at all actually was being approached by Bart and Aaron last year around this time and being sent Aaron's version of the script. I had heard some of the songs but was not necessarily an avid listener of the score, and definitely hadn't seen it though I am a huge Julie Andrew fan. I was actually shocked that I didn't know very much about it. My first impression was Aaron's version of that book, and then from there, went on and listened to the score and had watched the film version of it.

I was just so taken by not only the world in which these characters are trying to build this sense of fighting for democracy, I felt very attached to that idea at the time and still do, but I was really connected to the relationship, this love triangle that has been famously told and retold throughout the centuries and here we were trying to put our spin on it and I just felt so honored to be asked to be a part of this room.

Alison Stewart: It's interesting, so I was thinking back I think, Phillipa, you're one of the last people to be in the studio before the shutdown was February like 2020 and it was you're in Tumacho in this really wacky wild east village musical where you really were cactuses-- mittens on your hands-

Phillipa Soo: That's correct.

Alison Stewart: -and you're an Annie Oakley character and that's such a big swing Queen Guenevere or from Eliza Hamilton. I wanted to know what do you look for in a role? Because those are just wildly different parts.

Phillipa Soo: I guess you found me out, I like to do things that are different. I like to be challenged. I like to do things that scare me and ultimately, I think beyond my own personal artistic ego that goes with it, I just want to tell good stories. It really just starts with the writing and the room and feeling like I have an opportunity to stretch myself artistically in some way.

Alison Stewart: Bart what was it like to work with Phillipa now knowing that she really didn't come with any of the Camelot baggage. I hope that doesn't sound too negative. [chuckles] You know what I mean? She didn't have a preconceived notion about what this was, and what the part should be.

Bartlett Sher: I think that was the advantage. A lot of people who-- in our broad spectrum of audiences, you have audience members who seem to remember, Richard Burton and Julie Andrews, and then people who have no idea what Camelot is. For me, the advantage was, well, aside from the fact that she's an amazing artist, and incredible in the part, was just the chance to explore this thing as if it was new and to get a chance to build a Guenevere and an Arthur and the Lancelot in a world where we could make sense of these characters now, and also, have some conversation with the myths.

These myths are so primitive and important and central to who we are and every generation who comes upon these stories, has a weird responsibility to say, "Well, what does this myth mean to us now? This weird guy who came up with the first ideas going back to I think, the sixth century of how could we be different? What are ideas like of equality or justice or law? How can we explore them?" That became a central pivot point through which to explore this. To be fair, Guenevere is absolutely at the center of that because we wanted Guenevere who had agency who was the daughter of a king, who could participate and help develop these ideas.

You see this mutuality in this relationship and the central relationship really of the piece is Arthur and Guenevere and their love for each other, their responsibilities to each other, their responsibilities as leaders and kings and queens, and all that kind of fun stuff.

Alison Stewart: We're discussing Camelot, which is at the Vivian Beaumont Theater, with Director Bartlett Sher and Phillipa Soo who stars as Guenevere. Let's listen to-- I want to play another one of these rehearsal clips that people can find online. Phillipa, this is you singing The Lusty Month of May. For people who don't know the show? Could you set this up where this comes in the show?

Phillipa Soo: Well, this is, I would say, almost midway through just past the beginning of the show. Guenevere has been in the kingdom, a part of the kingdom for a little bit of time now and it is the month of May, the time for the celebration of spring, and something unique to our show and our version of the show but also just specifically for her experience. This is really the first time that she is with the people at court hosting this big event. Not only that, she has decided to invite everyone from every corner of the kingdom high and low to participate in this festival.

In our version, we see this beautiful celebration of the maypole and celebrating springtime in the month of May at much to the dismay of some of the knights who are not so pleased to be around farmers and other people of the kingdom. [chukles] It's joyful and beautiful and so fun and it's very celebratory and we have a blast doing it every night.

Alison Stewart: Let's take a listen.

[MUSIC - Phillipa Soo perfroms Lusty Month Of May from Camelot]

Alison Stewart: There are certain songs that fans of the show will expect, that's one of them, but Bart, there was the song, How to Handle a Woman was not in the original script that Aaron had and you wanted it put back in. It could be potentially problematic, How to Handle a Woman. Why did you think it was important?

Bartlett Sher: Let's be fair. It's a really wonderful song with a really bad verb. It has one verb, handle, where you're like, "Oh, wow, if only," because the rest of the song isn't emblematic of that. It's him struggling with how to talk to his wife, how to work through a very complex problem. Lerner in writing the song came up with this hook, I guess, and that part is where we-- which is always given it this reputation, but the song itself is very genuine and heartfelt about love and about how to work through these questions.

It just felt to me, if you're doing these revivals, you have to respect and honor the music that's there. I felt like we had to put it all in there and allow audiences their own chance to make sense of it.

Phillipa Soo: I also think there is value to his ignorance in that moment, to use a verb like handle. These people are trying to come out of the dark ages and the middle ages and figure out how to be modern human beings. I totally believe that he might not be using the correct verbs to describe people all the time because he himself is also learning. I think that's something that you can see in the book, in the script, that they are taking ownership over their own flaws.

Alison Stewart: When we first meet King Arthur, played by Andrew Burnap, what does he think it means to be a good king? How does that evolve over the course of the production in the book?

Bartlett Sher: Yes. The music itself is based on a book by T.H. White, which was very popular in the middle of the 20th century, and essentially, the premise of that book is the education of Arthur and how he learns through Merlin to be a king, and how he takes on these ideas. It's a very fantasy-based book. What I was really trying to do with a king who seemed to be learning, and I feel especially blessed in having Andrew play the part, is really capturing this young king trying to work through these very difficult problems.

That was the premise of really trying to honor the material upon which it was based, and also asking that question, which all of us do, what goes into a great leader? How do they learn? Where do they get things from? One of the great qualities of any major musical is the learning. Not so much the emotion, but the learning. What does the character learn? How do they come to see differently? That's what you watch Arthur go through. You watch Guenevere go through that as well.

That's why Andrew captures that, especially at the beginning, with a great deal of openness and innocence, and the political point that you made in your introduction that any of us could be king. Any of us could grow up to be in this position. It's not magic. We all have the responsibility in a republic to engage the questions of equality, justice, law, and where it is in our lives. That was the premise for making a Camelot for today to really give audiences a chance to ask themself that question.

Alison Stewart: Where's Guinevere when we meet her? What's important to her?

Phillipa Soo: When we first see Guinevere, she is getting as far away from Camelot as possible, which I think is a really fun way to set up a character's journey because she ends up doing a complete 180 to the point where it is her entire being, her legacy is being poured into this place that they're trying to create together, her and Arthur. She devotes her life to it. In the end, it's ultimately what is the downfall for her and her marriage, but it's just such a beautiful story.

Someone choosing to commit themselves and commit their lives to creating a world of justice and peace and decency and civility at their own expense, at the expense of their freedom, but how can she find agency within that? She is the product of the age that she's living in. She doesn't have rights. She, most of the time is not allowed to have an opinion, yet she chooses to insert herself into that narrative. I just love that from the get-go that she had a choice. She's presented with a choice from Arthur, and she makes that choice herself.

Alison Stewart: My guests this hour are Director Bartlett Sher and Phillipa Soo who stars Guinevere in Camelot, which is at the Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center. Bart, you've got this enormous stage and you really play with depth perception quite a bit. You have these beautiful projections in the back, but otherwise, it's a fairly spare set. What went into that decision?

Bartlett Sher: I've worked in that space a lot and it's a place you can fill up a scenery quite easily, but I really felt like what I was building was a performance space, not a set. If you get to the second act, there's many scenes in a row where it cuts from one to the other incredibly quickly. Some scenes last one line, that's another-- and was building what we would call a plastic muscle that held the piece together through the use of this gorgeous space in which we could transform from place to place literally in a second.

You have in the second act one long scene which is about 18 different scenes in a row. The language switches instantly from one to the other. The muscularity and fun of that is really exciting. Also, we worked a lot with the company to make it in their bodies and in their expression as artists, rather than in the trappings of scenery because it could be very easy in a show like Camelot to invent a crazy mythical ancient medieval world. Instead, what I wanted to do was focus on language music, and great artists to tell the story.

Alison Stewart: Taking the myth out of it, as I mentioned, there's not magic in this any longer.

Bartlett Sher: There wasn't a huge amount of magic in the original. There was two big moments, one where they take Merlin away and then there's another one in the second act where there's a magic forest where Morgan le Fay lives. I think Aaron's larger point, and I think a good point was magic can be deceptive. We have people in America who believe in almost anything. We were trying to make a larger point that these ideas are concrete and real and not magical. They're important and critical, and that the myth itself doesn't rely on the magic. It relies on the truth of equality, justice, law, agency for everyone in the country or in the community of our peace. That's what we were trying to focus the piece on.

Phillipa Soo: I also think it's something interesting about magic that you talked about earlier was that scene where Arthur says he pulled a sword out of a stone. How do you explain that? Guinevere comes back by saying, "Well, maybe a bunch of people loosened it for you." The other half of that line is that she says, "We have greatness in our grasp." Humanity does, but for some reason, every time we see it, we assign the responsibility to something else.

To me, that is just like a small microcosm of what we are capable of doing as human beings, that the magic is literally in our hands. A testament to what we've created on this stage. The craftsmanship and the artistry of the costumes and the set and the lights and the magic of this cast. The ability for just a group of bodies to come together and tell a story with very little set is also magic. I think that we as an ensemble created that magic in the room with the story that we're telling.

Alison Stewart: I want to fold the orchestra into this because from where I was sitting, I was watching the conductor with an eagle eye on the actors. I'm curious about your relationship as an actor with the conductor.

Phillipa Soo: I, first of all, have just on a very technical level, my conductor is like my heartbeat. It's like the soul, in a way, of the show, the heartbeat of the show because they are there watching the entire time overseeing literally everything that is happening. It's maybe one of the few people who are in the show, aside from the stage manager who is running it.

To me, Kimberly Grigsby, who is our wonderful music director, I just also have a personal relationship with her that goes back to when I did Amélie on Broadway. It's just so great to have such a strong relationship because I feel like I'm always taken care of by her. I never feel like the train is going to leave the station without me. I feel very safe and equipped and ready to tell this story because I know that she is there keeping that tempo, watching that, keeping that heartbeat herself as well.

Bartlett Sher: Kim Grigsby's, one of the great conductors on Broadway. She's just incredible. There's this principle in when you do music, whether it's opera or musicals of what's called contact. Every actor always needs contact with the conductor because the conductor has this extraordinary responsibility of holding together the 30 amazing artists under the stage with the 30 artists on the deck and pulling together and making this really-- talk about magic, incredible thing operate.

She operates the machine of the piece and builds the whole rhythm, keeps us on track, keeps the pulse of the piece moving forward, pulls out all the nuance of the music and the voices, everything. We're just blessed that she's there. It's also a deeply important principle of making great musical theater.

Alison Stewart: Phillipa, I leaned to my friend and I said, "She kind of glides." You glide across the stage and in those dresses, those big dresses, long dresses, I felt for her. I was like, "Please don't trip." I was willing you to make it across the stage. I'm curious about working-- because in the beginning you have pants and a cape and you bounce around, but then you are in these long gowns for the rest of the show. What is it like to work in that costuming?

Phillipa Soo: I love the costumes of this show, not just mine, everyone's. I am obsessed with our wonderful costume designer, Jennifer Muller. She is incredible, just an incredible storyteller with her artistry and her craftsmanship.

I know what every character, where they're coming from, what they do, what their cultural background is, what season it is, based on what they're wearing when they enter, and it made so much of my character work so easy, really, because we got to see the sketches early on in the rehearsal process and they were just sitting up there in the rehearsal room and if I was ever in doubt like, where I was coming from or what my environment was or what the given circumstances was, I would just look over at that wall and I would see just the gorgeous, luscious, beautiful colors and fabrics and think to myself like, "This woman is a queen."

Yes. To your point, she has this ferocity and speed because she gets to wear pants at the beginning of the show, which is unique to any Guenevere that we've seen before, but then once she's taken in by the kingdom, she's in a dress. Yes, those trains are long and I'm so flattered that you thought I'd glided because I have tripped before, it does happen, but it really helps me just drop into this woman and this world that she has to live in. She lives in a level of extravagance that she knows that is maybe a little bit absurd, but it does force me to move slower to let other people do the moving, and not have to force myself to walk around too much, but I just love it.

The costumes just make me feel amazing and ultimately just dropped in right away.

Alison Stewart: Have you ever [unintelligible 00:23:36] you wanted to get in on the sword action? You have a little knife, but have you ever during rehearsal just said, "Out me in coach, Let me try."

Phillipa Soo: Look, I would love to be in some choreographed sword fight, that would be amazing. However, I am running around like crazy and mentioning all these costumes, I literally don't have time to sit down backstage because I'm always changing my costume. [chuckles] I will happily sit and watch an amazing sword fight in this version. Put me in the next one in a sword fight, I'd love it.

Alison Stewart: If people go see Camelot, what is one detail you'd like them to spend an extra five seconds paying attention to?

Bartlett Sher: That's a great question. I think one of the great gifts of this production is Aaron's script, and he does something very special by really pulling together the world of this piece and making it so extraordinary in its resonance for today, in its truthfulness to the period in which we're writing and in his pulling together. He makes a Camelot you have never seen before and one which really helps us make sense of it today.

I feel that the language is especially critical to helping audiences and we're especially finding audiences who've never seen Camelot to be absolutely swept away by the world, but also to feel like they're understanding a little bit more about the world they live in today. To be able to do that balancing act is the thing I think that's the great accomplishment of our production and our work.

Alison Stewart: Pay attention to the language you hear on the stage and how it connects to what we're living through today.

Bartlett Sher: Yes, absolutely.

Alison Stewart: Camelot is at the Vivian Beaumont Theater in Lincoln Center. I've been speaking with Director Bartlett Sher and actor Phillipa Soo.

Thank you so much for spending time with us today.

Bartlett Sher: Thank you.

Phillipa Soo: Thank you.

Alison Stewart: A reminder, Camelot closes on July 23rd, so you still have about two weeks to see it at the Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center.

 

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