Newsday from New York, New York • 47

77T ft rj I ITHEATER1REVIEW -l With This Arthur AH in the Voice diction a little too much (Goulet by star decree dumps the British accent altogether) but lends an Emma Thompson-like sauce to the role that is fresh and contemporary She possesses a hearty soprano that holds its own against the memory of her predecessor and she served proudly the evening's elegiac inspiration I Gaze at You As Lancelot du Lac Steve Blanchard may have the more daunting assignment seeing as the originator hovers over his shoulder nearly throughout With his blond surfer profile he would appear to have been cast for being antithesis more Lancelot de Laguna Beach than de Las Vegas He gets the narcissistic joke of the character nicely enough and what his pleasant baritone lacks in volume he compensates for in showy dynamics His rendition Ever I Would Leave is a slo-mo roller coaster of crescendoing and de-cres-cendoing curves Norbert arena-friendly production step Bourland has the pedigree of a classically trained oompoeer he haa degrees from the New England Conservatory and Harvard and has received grants and cnmmiwrinmi from all the usual suspects "Hidden Legacies is nevertheless closer in style to popular music or Broadway despite a number of Stravinsky-esque passages and some harrowing electronic dissonances Much of the piece is unified by a sim ple motive heard at the very beginning of the work two parallel pending thirds my symbol of two men walking says Bourland This simple element recurs altered throughout the piece emphasizing sometimes the loss of a partner and ultimately the ambiguous but upbeat resolve of those who survive The upbeat ending was insisted upon when the work was commissioned were not asked to write a requiem but something more Bourland says SH FT HEN JOHN and I first started working on the Ilf Iff piece we were apprehensive that people would say What do you know about this? How can you know how I feel? Bourland is gay but not HIV-positive thought it might be like white people trying to write about black people dare you claim you know what But consoled a lot of people seen how they process grief and what it means to go through the loss of someone dose to jfou We were nervous but the response has been almost uniformly positive People we know who are living with HIV say done good" As a result qf the popularity Bourland and Hall are creating another cantata about gay life in the and Bourland is composing a third work based on poems by gay and lesbian poets The three pieces will eventually be put together as a trilogy for male chorus Philip Kennicott is a free-lance writer '47 I CJUKLOT Book and lyrics by Uan Jay Lamar Music by Frederick Loews Dbected and choreographed by Norbert Josnkr Scenic preducSon supervision and lading design by Nel Peter JampoKs Costume supervision and addttonri coshsne design by Ram Lae Sound design by Tom Mores Musical dbsclor John Vtaear Starring Robert Goutat Patricia Mas Stew Blanchard and James Valentine At the Gershwin lheater SOtti Sheet and Broadway Manhattan through Aug 7 By Jan Stuart STAFF WHITES HE COMMERCIALS lie That thunderclap baritone heard booming for the last month during station breaks really belongs to Robert Goulet more it still surges with the potent musk-scented masculinity that has agitated the hormones of ladies across the land and earned the quiet admiration of their knights entrance as King Arthur garners the second of two ovations in the first five minutes at Hie first is for the portable woodland set a knee-jerk response I can only attribute to the fact that audiences are suckers for elevation and dry ice Give us trees staircases and billowing mist we plots No matter that the tree trunks are flapping in the air-conditioning and the steps could fold up accordion-style at any moment a recession We make allowances Besides come to hear The Voice a national reference point whose continued bankability is further reinforced by the ads which neglect to tell us who is playing Guene-vereor Lancelot (Even the sheepdog gets more media play than either of them for sake) And since the flowery Lemer-Loewe score affords The Voice such disproportionate opportunity by the time poor Lancelot gets to sing his signature number Ever I Would Leave we find ourselves dubbing The Voice over his inside oar heads This serviceable bus-and-truck production marks my third encounter with this 1960 musical wnmigh choruses of on to conclude that is finally a boring pageant with a few interesting notions a couple of witty jokes and as many genuinely charming songs One of the more paradoxical fascinations is its Cold-War era exal- -tation of a regimented utopia a legal limit to the snow here" Arthur sings proudly of his enchanted domain eight the morning fog must I know about you but thi sounds 'to me suspiciously like Mineola where one can get thrown in the slammer for letting the grass grow over 4 inches This is the show mind you that became a metaphor for the Kennedy years The connection was in the rosy-cheeked idealism of its fervent belief in the ability of a young and innovative new order to maintain the peace JFK and his first lady Jacqueline also brought the White House a flirtation with splendor an ill-fated legacy of regal elegance and brio worthy of King Arthur mid his Queen Guenevere You can just picture John and Jackie singing Do the Simple Folk Arthur and ode to royal ennui Goulet and his queen of the hour Patricia Kies have a nice time with this most captivating of numbers Kies pushes the fussy Julie Andrews Robert Blanchard friend took him to the original Kahiki in Ohio nice thing is there wasn't a touch of irony there They spoofing anything or treating the place like a relic even though it changed since 1961 It was just a nice The best thing about the place? fire extinguisher he At the Polynesia is all play us not serious and it has that element of tack which is kind of he says so colorful and you feel like stepping on any That mean the waitresses watch their feet though Bringing our triple pupu order a server in a grass skirt stubbed her toe on the lava pool and let out a stream of non-island obscenities just getting used to working with she said Ptioio by Scott Windufi Goulet ss Msg Arthur Patricia Idas as Ms queen and Steve as Lancelot da Lac at tha Gershwin Theater ANYTHING was off that night it was the music They were playing ABBA this a bad my companion said All Your Love on Actually they should have been playing Elvis According to a new book by David Adler called Life and Cuisine of Elvis Presky" the king loved 1950s mats of Polynesian food which was the food thing throughout the 1950s and early 1960s in America He especially liked poi because he could eat it with his hands has been built to pack up and get out of town quick This means that the costumes and sets have been ranted from hither and yon with some additional credited in the Playbill In lieu of opulence there are truck-loads of floor-length fabric that bounce light in your face and a tree that twinkles like Tavern on the Green The visual is rivaled by the double turn of James Valentine whose audience-groveling shtick as Merlyn and Pcjlin-ore threatens to turn Camelot into Haifralot The main spectacle is reserved for The Voice and Goulet gives you your worth in power This is not an Arthur of your wildest dreams: acting amounts to grimaces glowers and cautious smiles and he barked through the title tune with all the expression of a singing newscaster Generally he gives Arthur a vocal authority heretofore unheard and in good shape May he prosper be healthy and return in another 30 years in the role of Merlyn Ufi i IT till? ft Utli At our Huli Huli Cornish Hen Poi ala and Hidden Treasures Grilled Seafood gave way to a tropical fruit soup with floating islands of kiwi mango and pineapple sorbet As tbs music switched from ABBA to Sylvester singing Me Fed Mighty a table full of tuxedoed men got up nd started dancing with their girl-dates At another table someone began taking pictures so we did too snapping away at everyone When we got up to say our Alohas a beautiful young man stopped us great you guys dressed for the he said digging the phosphorescent florals of our shirts for the I said man this is real life for Well for me anyway i i I 4 i i.