Monty Python’s Spamalot – Mmm-mmm Good! The wait is over, Cleveland! The Tony Award-winning Best Musical of 2005, MONTY PYTHON’S SPAMALOT, will open the KeyBank Broadway Series at Playhouse Square Center, running October 3-15, at the State Theatre. SPAMALOT is the outrageous new musical comedy lovingly “ripped-off” from the internationally famous comedy team’s film classic Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the same folks who lit up our TVs in the 1970s with “Monty Python’s Flying Circus.” Under the deft directorial touch of Mike Nichols (Tony Award-winner for Best Director for SPAMALOT), Python fans will be in heaven and musical comedy buffs will connect with all the inside jokes. Oh, so you’re not a “Pythomaniac” who’ll laugh hysterically just hearing the word “Ni” or at the mention of a deadly rabbit? You didn’t see the movie from which SPAMALOT is indeed “ripped off” or any of the 45 TV episodes? It won’t matter. All the fun and craziness onstage don’t require a degree in Pythonic lunacy for anyone to follow the wacky sketches strung together in the simple plot. Indeed, Nichols creates an all-audiences appealing combination of film adaptation and the popular “Allusionary Musical” (the kind with plenty of easy-to-spot visual and vocal references to other well-known shows and performance styles).

Cast of the national tour of MONTY PYTHON'S SPAMALOT. Book and lyrics by Eric Idle, music by John Du Prez and Eric Idle, directed by Mike Nichols. Photo: Joan Marcus

Telling the legendary tale of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, and their quest for the Holy Grail (well, sort of, anyway), SPAMALOT features a chorus line of dancing divas and knights, flatulent Frenchmen, killer rabbits, amputees, gays, cows, monks, Jews, Finns, historians, bunnies, bed-wetters, socialists, the French, the English, the Scots, the runs, the dead, the Apostles, the Bible and Andrew Lloyd Webber. We’re introduced to buxom showgirls carrying trays of jiggling JELL-O mounds and Gallic knaves on castle battlements hurling barnyard insults.

In other words, it’s a world of delightfully silly stuff and nonsense, from the opening scene – a little Finnish number (Fisch Schlapping Song) that leaves you thinking you’ve been swept away to the spiritual home of Lord of the Rings – to the final curtain call/sing-along reprise of Always Look on the Bright Side of Life (which is actually from another Python film, The Life of Brian). It doesn’t try to be serious; it focuses on the comedy that has made Monty Python a part of pop culture for almost 40 years.

The SPAMALOT touring company stars Michael Siberry as King Arthur. Siberry’s many stage credits include the title role in The Royal Shakespeare Company’s tour of The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, Captain VonTrapp in The Sound of Music and Merchant of Venice with Dustin Hoffman.

Also starring are Bradley Dean as Sir Galahad, Tom Deckman as the Historian, Jeff Dumas as Patsy, Pia C. Glenn as the Lady of the Lake, Christopher Gurr as Sir Bedevere, Richard Holmes as Sir Lancelot and David Turner as Sir Robin.

SPAMALOT features a book by Eric Idle, based on the screenplay of Monty Python and the Holy Grail by creators Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin, with music and lyrics by the Grammy Award-winning team of Mr. Idle and John Du Prez.

Besides his work with Monty Python in films and on TV, Eric Idle has written a West End play, Pass the Butler; three novels and many songs too rude to mention. He has sung opera, acted in movies, appeared on television and crossed America performing comedy on The Greedy Bastard Tour. His diary of the 15,000 mile bus journey was recently published by Harper Collins.

John Du Prez has composed more than 20 feature film scores, including A Fish Called Wanda, A Private Function, The Meaning of Life, Personal Services, UHF and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles I, II, & III. He has worked with Eric Idle since 1978.

Get ready to laugh – a lot! Get ready to groan – a lot! Get ready to hold your sides from laughing – a lot! Get down to the State Theatre at Playhouse Square Center for SPAMALOT! It’s mmm-mmm good, and you’re going to love it – A LOT!!

Trying to describe what this show is about is not easy. A quote, taken out of context from a review in the The New York Times, may sum it up well enough: “A resplendently silly new musical.”

The fun begins even before the show begins, as you thumb through your program and learn about a foreign language “Moosical.” It’s a set-up for the historian-narrator’s solemn “For this was England” introduction to having the ensemble hilariously land in a country that rhymes with but isn’t England. Huh? You’ll see.

King Arthur’s journey to recruit warriors for his kingdom (which here is Camelot-cum-Caesar’s Palace) has him and his loyal sidekick Patsy clop-clop-clopping through the starting gate on their non-existent horses. The quest for the Holy Grail changes from a holy chalice for God (a voice-over role for original Pythonite John Cleese) to shrubbery and then putting on a show and taking it to Broadway for the Knight of Ni. That final permutation of the grail adds to the show’s nods to other Broadway shows or performance styles, notably a sendup of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s never-ending, much reprised arias (The Song That Goes Like This) and the knights doing a “bottle dance” a la Fiddler on the Roof (You Won’t Succeed on Broadway) as well as a Peter Allen crossed with Las Cage Aux Folles rhumba carnival (His Name is Lancelot).

Thus, the plot becomes a two-tiered operation. On the one hand there is the dutiful acting-out of the movie’s most famous set pieces (the killer-rabbit scene, the bring-out-your-dead scene, the taunting Frenchman scene, etc.). On the other hand, the show spoofs classic song-and-dance extravaganzas, showing what the satiric revue Forbidden Broadway might be like with an $11 million budget.

Monty Python fans appreciate SPAMALOT’s many references to the 1975 Holy Grail film, as well as other material in the Python canon, including a line from The Lumberjack Song, nods to the Ministry of Silly Walks, the Election Night Special and Dead Parrot Sketch routines, a rendition of the song Always Look on the Bright Side of Life from Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979), and the Fisch Schlapping Song, which is a reference to both The Fish-Slapping Dance and the song Finland. Another reference is actually part of the program; there are several gag pages about a musical entitled Dik Od Triaanenen Fol (Finns Ain’t What They Used To Be).

Broadway musical fans appreciate all the visual and auditory references to other musicals and musical theater in general, such as the spoof of Andrew Lloyd Webber productions and many other Broadway power ballads; the character of Sir Not Appearing in This Show being Don Quixote; a member of the French “army” dressed as Eponine from Les Miserables; and a line pulled from Another Hundred People from Sondheim’s Company by the “damsel” Herbert. The song You Won’t Succeed On Broadway parodies The Producers and Yentl.

Spamalot – The Songs

Act I
1. Fisch Schlapping Song
2. King Arthur’s Song
3. I Am Not Dead Yet
4. Come With Me
5. Laker Girls Cheer
6. The Song That Goes Like This
7. All for One
8. Knights of the Round Table
9. Song That Goes Like This (reprise)
10. Find Your Grail
11. Run Away

Act III Wait…No…Act II
1. Always Look On the Bright Side of Life
2. Brave Sir Robin
3. You Won’t Succeed on Broadway
4. The Diva’s Lament
5. Where Are You?
6. Here Are You
7. His Name is Lancelot
8. I'm All Alone
9. Song That Goes Like This (reprise)
10. The Holy Grail
11. Find Your Grail Final-Medley
12. Always Look On the Bright Side of Life
(Sing-Along Reprise)