Camelot and Hula

Yesterday seemed to be PBS day in our house.  There were a couple of interesting shows that I recorded and watched.

PBS's Live from Lincoln Center had a performance of Camelot, one of my favorite musicals.  Gabriel Byrne played King Arthur and a broadway singer named Marin Mazzie played Guenevere.  Lancelot was played by baritone Nathan Gunn.  I wish I could say this was a good performance, but it was horribly mediocre, the sort of thing I would expect to see here in Dubuque, and certainly far below New York standards.  Usually, I like Gabriel Byrne, but he was horribly miscast in this role.  The actress playing Guenevere had a lovely voice, but she flubbed her lines a couple of times.  I mean literally, sang the wrong words and had to catch herself.  WTF?  I might expect that in a local small-town production, but certainly not from something in New York!  I was very impressed with Nathan Gunn, however.  First time I've seen the guy (looks like he tends to focus on opera, which I tend to ignore).  Gorgeous man, incredible voice.  I guess it helps that a strong baritone tends to make me weak in the knees. *fans self*

Since this performance was not a theatrical run (it was more to showcase the orchestra), there wasn't much effort put into the costumes and they looked cheesy.  The dancers weren't bad, but the chorus was pretty weak.  That may not have been their fault, however--usually in musicals, the orchestra is located in a pit below the stage, but since this was the New York Philharmonic, they were placed behind the singers and often overpowered them.  Christopher Lloyd put in an appearance as King Pellinore and almost stole the show--it's the first time I've actually seen the role of Pellinore being funny, as opposed to tedious.

Honestly, I was horribly disappointed in this performance.  I really was looking forward to seeing it and to see it so badly done...le sigh.  Well, at least it was on TV and I hadn't spent however much a ticket to Lincoln Center costs.  Not that I'd be able to travel to New York anyway. :-P

A bit of history here:  I'm not sure when I first became aware of the King Arthur legend.  I already knew about it in elementary school, so I'm assuming that it was in some storybook that my parents read to me as a very young child.  It was one of my favorite stories.  I do remember the first time I heard Camelot, though.  I saw the Broadway Cast recording (this is back in the days of vinyl) at the library when I was in 3rd grade and checked it out.  This is the one with Richard Burton, Julie Andrews and Robert Goulet.  I absolutely fell in love with it, and begged my parents for a copy of the album, which I later got for Xmas.  I wore it out, I listened to it so much.  (Incidently, I also managed to get my brother hooked on the show because he'd heard me playing the songs so often.) 

When I was in junior high school, Richard Burton revived the role and my father managed to get us tickets.  They weren't great seats (my dad, as ever, got the cheapest ones), but it was magical all the same.  I had caught the movie version (with Richard Harris and Vanessa Redgrave) on tv at some point in the 1970s.  Gorgeous (albiet historically inaccurate) costumes, but the production suffered from Redgrave's inability to sing and some of the supporting cast's bad acting.  Harris as Arthur was fine, and actually Franco Nero did a pretty good job as Lancelot, considering he couldn't speak English at the time and learned his lines phonetically.  Later, I saw a few local productions of the play.  If someone is doing a version of Camelot, I'll usually make an effort to go see it.

And every single one of these productions was far superior to the dreck the Lincoln Center put out in their version.  That's saying a lot.

The PBS show Independent Lens showed an interesting movie recently: Na Kamalei: The Men of Hula, following the story of one man and his hula school.  There's a preview here on youtube if you are curious.  Ya'll know me: I can't resist Hawaii.  The Islands are Calling!

What I found most interesting about this documentary was the juxtaposition of what is perceived as a "feminine" dance being performed by men.  Actually, a version of hula was always danced by men, but because of all the hip-swaying, it was perceived as lewd and was almost stomped out when the white settlers came to the islands in the 19th century.  The tradition was kept among the women (I guess women swaying their hips isn't lewd at all, huh?), but very few men got involved until there was a great revival of Hawaiian culture during the 1970's. 

Even now, there is a stigma attached to men's hula.  It was interesting to see one of the dancers sitting down to dinner with his family, and hearing from his kids how they were teased at school because their father "must be gay" to be dancing hula.  The man actually broke out in tears when his oldest son (now grown) confessed that he was very proud of the way his father danced.  Several of the other dancers mentioned their initial resistance to learning hula because of the "gay" factor, but then, when they got into it, they got hooked.

When you see these men dance, "feminine" is the last word that comes to mind.  They are extremely masculine, and also graceful, and yes, beautiful.

The film follows a particular school as they prepare for an annual dance competition.  This school, one of the older ones, has a company of men who are mostly middle-age (although there were a couple of younger men in the bunch).  They don't perform competition that often because of the intensity--(IIRC, they only show up to this competition once every ten years).  There was some chest-beating going on about them being old--a lot of the groups they would be competing against were comprised of much younger men.  But they go on and work to get in the contest anyway.

The film was very touching.  The watcher really gets to care about these everyday men who are taking time from their lives to preserve a part of their native tradition.  (And yes, as always, there is one "white guy gone native"--in this case, a man from Connecticut who came to Hawaii to visit when he was young, got hooked on the culture, and now teaches Hawaiian Studies at the University there.  He blends in, though.)

Well-worth watching, if you get a chance.  Check the local listings.  There is also a version of the film out on DVD.