For Robert Goulet, who will turn 65 on Thanksgiving Day, the triumphs during his career have not been the victories as Lancelot and Arthur in countless productions of Lerner and Loewe’s musical Camelot, but rather the battle he won over prostate cancer.
It is a victory that prompts the conversation in every interview in every city he visits, hopeful he will help inspire those with the disease to battle on, and convince others to subject themselves to critical early screening.
“I’ve been out there pushing it for a long time,” Goulet said. “I’ve had letters from people saying I’ve saved their son’s life, their father’s life. I had radical prodestectomy and three weeks to the day I was on stage in tights.”
A productive life
He tells stories of those who see his triumph, convincing themselves that they too can carry on a productive and active life. For Goulet, it has been an active and successful career, one spawned from the triumph nearly 38 years ago when he brought his deep baritone voice to the Broadway stage as Lancelot.
“It was the first thing I did in the United States,” said Goulet, who was born in Massachusetts but raised in Edmonton, Canada. “It brought me to national recognition — that and the Ed Sullivan show.”
Sullivan featured the music from Camelot on one of his television shows. But ask Goulet if his roles in Camelot are the most memorable of his career and he’ll say that his memorable role is “probably something in the future. I don’t look back.”
For the week ahead, however, Goulet will not only look back, but truly straight into the future as his son Michael, who at least temporarily abandoned a rock career, joins him in the cast of Camelot that opens tomorrow (Tuesday, Oct. 13) at the Providence Performing Arts Center.
The production will be at the Performing Arts Center through Sunday, Oct. 18.
Goulet warns that audiences that want to see him should do it now, because he just might not do the role again. Yet, he admits “I’m enjoying it more this time around I’m finding things that I had not found before.”
Those are little things, movements or expressions that draw an extra laugh from the audience. Playing King Arthur, he says, is a role he never wanted to play: “They wouldn’t let me play Guinevere, so I played King Arthur.”
Numerous awards
His is a career that has not only spanned generations, but has won him numerous awards, countless appearances and fans who have become accustomed to hearing his beautiful baritone voice. Looking to the future, Goulet expects his career to remain active.
“I want to just keep on working, keep on improving. I’m just getting the hang of it,” he said.
And that memorable performance? Maybe it’s the musical he’s now working on, based upon the Ghost of Mrs. Muir, a musical that is now in the throes of getting the financial backing that will finally bring it to the stage.
