Knight has his day in Bowl’s ‘Camelot’

Those big screens at the Hollywood Bowl have rarely felt so organic to the hillside amphitheater as they did Sunday night, when they blazed with a live feed of Jeremy Irons portraying a king given to soul-stirring speeches.

The well-regarded movie actor headlined a one-night-only presentation of “Camelot” that also benefited from the reunion of key talents from the Bowl performance two years ago of another Alan Jay Lerner-Frederick Loewe musical, “My Fair Lady.” Melissa Errico was once more on hand to play the Julie Andrews role, this time as Guenevere, as was Paxton Whitehead (Col. Pickering in “My Fair Lady”), again serving as pal and all-around second banana, but now as Pellinore. Gordon Hunt also returned to direct.

With the 1956 “My Fair Lady” as its predecessor, the 1960 “Camelot” had an extremely tough act to follow. The same was true of these Bowl presentations. Although audiences instinctively respond to “Camelot’s” “brief, shining moment” of civilized conflict resolution at the Round Table, the retelling of Arthurian legend rarely generates the sheer rapture of “My Fair Lady.” Rarely either did the Bowl “Camelot” duplicate the craft or polish of 2003’s “Lady.”

No matter. The crowd came to cheer Irons even through his pitch-challenged singing -- and was repaid with a presentation that was musically pleasurable in most other respects, from James Barbour’s gloriously resonant vocal work as Lancelot to John Mauceri’s supple conducting of 48 instrumentalists in the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra.

Irons compellingly conveyed Arthur’s growth from ordinary man -- nervous, frustrated and excitable -- to wise, confident king. And when he applied his plummy baritone speaking voice to Arthur’s speeches, well, he could have run for office.

Try though he did, though, he couldn’t generate the same effect with his singing. He fared best in his first number, “I Wonder What the King Is Doing Tonight,” which allowed for a forceful, dynamic approach, but he lost ground in songs that required jauntiness (the title tune) or, heaven forbid, romance (“How to Handle a Woman”). Hanging consistently beneath pitch, Irons pulled melodic lines out of shape and, in the big-screen close-ups of such moments, never looked comfortable.

Fortunately, Errico could be depended upon to salve the audience’s assailed ears. Her sweet, fluttering soprano sparkled with mischief during “The Lusty Month of May” and resolved to a lovely shimmer in “Before I Gaze at You Again.”

Loping across the stage with casual, athletic confidence, Barbour’s Lancelot quickly established himself as head jock among the knights, and when the singer opened his rich, ringing bass-baritone to full power during “If Ever I Would Leave You,” his amplified voice must have been audible even to the tourists down on Hollywood Boulevard.

Whitehead -- with that incredibly mellifluous voice that makes him the James Earl Jones of comedy -- was a hoot as comic-relief character Pellinore, and Malcolm Gets made evil a whole lot of fun as he sneered and cackled his way through the role of mayhem-minded Mordred.

Arthur creates a paradise, only to see it destroyed when emotions upset the equilibrium. That message lingered after Sunday’s ovations, giving the audience something to think about as a night of movie-star magic gave way again to bittersweet reality.