Stealing a deft march on the upcoming film, King Arthur, Ian Talbot has chosen a good moment to revive this 1960 Lerner and Loewe musical. It's not only an amiably pleasing show but it also reminds us how politicians appropriate popular culture for their own ends; and nowhere more so than in the case of JFK and Camelot.
The show was quickly adopted by Kennedy and his court. Yet, though it may be tempting to think of Kennedy's Washington as a pacific Camelot, within six months of his inauguration JFK had sent troops into Laos and Vietnam, sanctioned an illegal invasion of Cuba and authorised the biggest nuclear tests in American history.
This is not the fault of the musical through which runs a vein of what Tynan called "sensible idealism". There is still something touching about Arthur's determination to banish war and create a round table of chivalric equals. All this is well brought out in Daniel Flynn's intelligent, thoughtful, quietly charismatic performance; there is even a touch of Professor Higgins in his failure to understand women and dogged desire to learn "how the creatures think".
Lauren Ward is a brisk, well-sung Guinevere, Matt Rawle a suitably vain Lancelot and Mark Hilton a pushy, ponytailed Mordred who subverts the Arthurian ideal. Admittedly Russ Abbot has to work hard to conjure laughs out of the show's comic relief and there is something absurdly prophetic about the king's final injunction to a young Tom Malory to run off and tell the Arthurian story; I was reminded of the character who once announced: "I'm off to the hundred years' war." But the show is highly illuminating about the constant American conflict between idealism and pragmatism. When Arthur announces his credo as "not might is right but might for right" he might even be speaking for the current presidential incumbent.
· Until September 4. Box office: 08700 601 811.
