Monty Python’s Spamalot

[August 22nd, 2007] It’s been a tough couple of decades for Monty Python fans. Since the release of the comedy troupe’s last full-blown project, 1983’s The Meaning of Life , we’ve had to content ourselves with revisiting the movies on home video, watching reruns of the TV show on PBS or following the fortunes of the remaining five-man team in watered-down sub-Python projects like A Fish Called Wanda. The closest thing to a reunion in recent years has been John Cleese and Eric Idle sharing voiceover credits on Shrek the Third .

No wonder, then, that the unexpected worldwide success of Monty Python’s Spamalot has got us all aflutter. For die-hard aficionados, here’s the first legitimate excuse they’ve had in years to shout, “Fetch me a shwuberwy!” in public and have at least a semblance of pop-culture relevance. Which is odd, really, because Spamalot doesn’t feature members of the original Monty Python cast.

“Lovingly ripped off” from the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail , Spamalot is the theatrical equivalent of watching a farcical tribute band—more Rutles than Beatles. It re-creates the movie’s plot-free story of King Arthur’s quest for the Holy Grail, but owes as much of its DNA to the Lionel Bart and Lloyd Webber-esque musicals it lampoons as to the Monty Python movie that spawned it.

Written by Python librettist Eric Idle, scored by film composer John Du Prez and directed by the usually more serious Mike Nichols, Spamalot opened on Broadway in 2005 and clip-clopped away with 14 Tony Award nominations and three wins. Now playing in London, Vegas and on Broadway, this touring version brings its chorus line of dancing divas, can-canning knights, flatulent Frenchmen, killer rabbits and infamous legless knight to Portland for 11 days.

Although you won’t see any of the Tony-winning Broadway cast onstage at Keller Auditorium, the touring cast is nonetheless promising—especially the very popular London import Michael Siberry as King Arthur and Patrick Heusinger (seen in the 2006 film Sweet Land ) as Sir Lancelot, among other things.

In a post-9/11 world, it seems our taste for pompous, self-important theater has diminished, replaced instead by a hankering for good old-fashioned silliness. And if it’s infectious silliness you want, Spamalot ’s got more than enough to go around. Python fan or not, by the time you walk out of this one, it won’t just be the knights who are saying “Ni!”.