Spamalot: The Background and Making of a Hit Musical

So what, exactly, is SPAMALOT?

MONTY PYTHON’S SPAMALOT is basically the cult film Monty Python and the Holy Grail adapted for the stage. It involves many items and characters that are familiar from the movie: the two halves of a coconut being banged together to represent the clopping of horses’ hooves, the killer rabbit, the holy hand grenade, King Arthur and, of course, all of his silly knights of the round table.

But unlike the mere $400,000 spent on the original 1975 film, the new Broadway and touring show cost multi-millions, having already spent the budget of the original film on lawyers alone, and those millions went into making a simple comedy sketch-show into a full-blown musical comedy. The biggest difference when comparing and contrasting the film and play is simply that the play is loaded with songs guaranteed to engender all sorts of laughter, from titters to guffaws to side-splitting explosions. Though Holy Grail did include a few musical notations (such as Brave Sir Robin, which is featured in the stage version), SPAMALOT has over 25 numbers that poke fun at everything from Andrew Lloyd Webber to homosexuality, from Las Vegas to the plague, and from pessimism to death itself.

Another large difference is that while Holy Grail is basically a bunch of sketches strung together with no real ending, SPAMALOT has a plot (albeit a loose one) and a resolution. The last major variation is the addition of a new character: The Lady of the Lake, as fabled in most Arthurian legends. By instituting The Lady of the Lake, a female was added to the mostly-male cast, thus balancing the show and “rounding it out.” The lady also makes way for a touch of romance which leads to marriage at the very end.

But SPAMALOT didn’t just happen with the snap of a finger. The idea for SPAMALOT was conceived in the early 80s, yet the first draft of the play wasn’t composed until December of 2001. The brainchild of Python member Eric Idle, SPAMALOT didn’t even really begin to take shape until 2002. Along with lifetime friend and musical companion John Du Prez, the two began working on songs for the show once they had a basic script. Idle writes below from his diary:

Looking back now at the first draft, I am struck by how little of the original lyrics we kept. In the text I had indicated areas where I felt we needed a song, but it was all still fairly loose. There were some completed lyrics, some snatches of doggerel, and some fairly sketchy rhyming gags to indicate song possibilities. Here and there we lifted a line for a song, or we picked up a theme from a suggestion, but there was total sea change the minute John came on board. That’s the great thing about a partner, they get you to places you would never even have imagined. We got so into writing that at one point we ad-libbed a complete song onto the tape recorder, John at the piano and me screaming lyrics. It is still our favorite song in the show and it was the one the Pythons immediately responded to—The Song That Goes Like This.

After completing the recordings and once they were all onto a CD, the CD was shipped to the other four surviving Pythons: John Cleese, Terry Jones, Terry Gilliam and Michael Palin. Somewhat surprisingly, all agreed to the musical. Not long after, Bill Haber was signed on as the producer, and Academy Award-winning Mike Nichols was set to direct. Piece by piece the musical fell into place with actors Tim Curry, David Hyde Pierce and Hank Azaria set to star as Arthur, Robin and Lancelot.

The show pre-opened at Chicago’s Shubert Theatre on December 21, 2004. All shows in Chicago sold out within a single week. The show played to packed houses on a nightly basis, and it was well received by the public and critics alike. The only ones who didn’t seem to like it – and they were few and far between – had only one complaint, and that was that the play was “not enough like the film.”

The show then moved to New York and Broadway’s Shubert Theatre in February. From then until March, it had what is called a “gypsy run” – basically another set of previews and “tester shows.” But when it finally premiered on March 17 and “officially” opened, hundreds of fans and reporters swarmed the theater to snap photos of a rare sight: a Python reunion. The evening ended in confetti and tears of joy.

Since that time, the popularity of SPAMALOT has continued to grow. It still plays to sold-out houses and remains a top grossing musical on Broadway, pulling in thousands of dollars a week in revenues from tickets and merchandise that includes clopping-ready coconuts, t-shirts, stuffed animals, books, killer rabbit puppets, special edition golden honey grail SPAM and more. A 11-stop tour across America (and parts of Canada) is currently underway. In October the show will premiere in London where British fans have already snapped up tickets, and coming next year SPAMALOT will hold court in its very own Grail Theatre in the Wynn Casino in Las Vegas, designed and built by Eric Idle and original set designer Tim Hatley.