Spamalot
photo from playbill.com
"On second thought, let's not go to Camelot. It is...a silly place." - from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, 1975
"What happens in Spamalot, stays in Spamalot." - from the Broadway play, Spamalot, 2005
In the opening scene of Spamalot, the Broadway play written by Monty Python’s Eric Idle based on the Monty Python and the Holy Grail movie, a historian walks on stage and sets the scene, providing background on the Arthur legend and 10th century England. The curtain lifts and out comes a group of men and women who perform a “traditional” fish slapping song in which the participants sing and dance and slap one another with a large, slimy fish. The historian comes back out on stage to correct the confusion: “I said England, not Finland!” The Fins apologize and walk off stage.
When we pulled up in front of our hotel on west 44th street in Manhattan, just three blocks east of the Shubert theater, home of Spamalot, we were met by a doorman who promised to take care of our car. The doorman was dressed almost as preposterously as the Finnish fish slappers. Why is it that in this day and age we still require our doormen to dress up like clowns? The doorman explained that parking was based on a 24 hour period. We had to pick up our car by 3:30pm the next day or we would incur another day’s parking fee. “And how much is that fee?” I asked. “Forty-five dollars,” he replied. Plus the $5 tip, which the doorman graciously accepted along with my car keys. I felt like he had just pulled a herring out of his pants and walloped me in the head.
I must admit that my reaction upon learning that Eric Idle wanted to bring the Holy Grail story to Broadway was: Sacrilege! I was deeply concerned. The funny bits from this movie are like religion to me. I can recite most of the dialog from memory. Despite having seen the movie a hundred times, I will still laugh out loud at the mere thought of a particular scene. So, the idea of ordinary actors playing the parts made famous by the Monty Python comedy troupe sent shivers down my spine. Also, I worried that the Broadway version of the movie would be dumbed down and sanitized for short attention span America.
It turns out that my fears were unfounded. The actors in Spamalot are superb. They clearly understand their characters. More than that, they love and respect the heritage and pedigree behind these roles. Casting Tim Curry as King Arthur was a brilliant choice. Curry has unfaltering stage presence. His commanding voice fills the theater. He is perfect as the King of England. (“How do you know he’s a king?" "He hasn’t got shit all over him.”) Hank Azaria is the hardest worker in the play. His many roles include Sir Lancelot, The French taunter, the Knight of Ni, and Tim the Enchanter. His ability to do voices (Azaria is best known for his numerous roles on the Simpsons television show) makes him the most important person in this play. It is clear to me that Hank Azaria grew up with Monty Python as so many of us did and gets the roles he is playing. I would even go so far as to say that Azaria now owns the role of the French taunter (sorry, John Cleese). David Hyde Pierce is perhaps the weakest link in the cast. Even so, he does a passable job as Sir Robin. This was Eric Idle’s role in the original movie. Idle has an uncanny ability to look like a vacuous twit. (Remember him as the meddling “nudge, nudge” guy from the television show?) David Hyde Pierce does his best to look the look, but sometimes it falls a little short. Still, there is much more to like about this cast than to knit-pick about.
As for the silly bits, most are represented. The only important scene from the Holy Grail movie that was not in the play was Castle Anthrax. You may recall that this was the scene in the movie where Galahad the Chaste in his solo quest for the holy grail finds himself in the company of a castle full of beautiful and horny women. Given the bevy of beautiful dancers cast in Spamalot (known simply as “The Laker Girls” who accompany the Lady of the Lake, played by Sara Ramirez) I for one would not have objected to seeing this hilarious bit brought to stage.
When the original Holy Grail movie was filmed it was done on the cheap. The budget was meager. The costumes and sets were cheesy. The special effects groaningly stupid. The Pythons couldn’t afford real horses for the movie, thus the idea was born to have King Arthur and his knights pretend to ride horses while trusty servant Patsy followed behind banging together two coconut halves to simulate the clattering of hooves.
The cheap look and feel of the Monty Python television show and movies is an endearing quality that I hoped would be preserved in the Broadway show. In the Holy Grail movie, God appears in the sky as an animated Terry Gilliam character. In the play, God’s legs drop from the ceiling as a cardboard cutout. God’s lines are delivered in a recording by John Cleese. (Cleese is the only Pythoner to have a speaking role in the performance.) “Are you looking up my robe?” God asks Arthur. “Oh, sorry,” Arthur says. “Now what are you doing?” God asks more insistently. “Averting my eyes,” says Arthur. “Well don’t.” The cow hurled over the castle wall by the French taunter is a large stuffed toy. It falls squarely on trusty servant Patsy, of course. The “Killer Rabbit” is an adorably cute puppet that ends up biting the head off of one of the knights. With his head gone, the spurting of the knight’s blood is simulated by ribbons of red cloth fluttering in the air where his head used to be. The puppet rabbit is quickly switched with another one that is covered in fake blood; it does a sinister little victory dance. Cheesy indeed! In fact, at one point, when the character Tim the Enchanter appears in the sky before King Arthur and the “knights of the table that is so very round,” the King asks, “Who is this strange man that appears before us hanging by visible cables?”
The day after the show, Cynde and I walked around mid-town Manhattan for much of the day. I couldn’t get Spamalot out of my mind. It was such a wonderful and memorable evening. Looking up at the Empire State building I imagined a cow being hurled down from the parapet and landing on top of me. Would it kill me? Even if it was stuffed? In the New York public library building I could have sworn I heard “Ni. Ni.” The Knights Who Say Ni? Here in the library? No, just a woman with a delicate sneeze. And what about the Monty Python “Spam sketch” for which the Broadway show was named? (Strangely, Spam, the meat product, is never once mentioned in Spamalot.) In the familiar Monty Python television sketch, a husband and wife couple played by Eric Idle and Graham Chapman (in drag) enter a restaurant that serves, well, Spam and not much else. In New York such a restaurant would be called “Just Spam” to go along with some of its other specialty stores: Just Shades; Just Brass; Just Cats; Just Jazz; Just Lace, to name a few. A couple of blocks away from the Empire State building we saw a preposterous-sounding establishment that made us rub our eyes and look a second time: “Just Pickles.”
Just perfect.
8:53:09 PM  Stories
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