Monty Python’s Spamalot

we eat ham, and jam and Spam a lot

On Saturday, after beginning our day in Forest Park bicycling, we ended it there too. We went to see Spamalot, the opening show of this summer’s Muny season. Spamalot is Eric Idle’s musical send up of the 1975 comedy movie, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which in turn was a parody of the Arthurian legends.

Spamalot borrows heavily from Holy Grail, lifting whole the bits, “I’m not dead yet”, an Autonomous Collective, the taunting by French soldiers, the Trojan Rabbit and the Black Knight. Some bits were left out, like the witch scene. Other bits of the movie were altered or completely changed, for example the modern-day historian / narrator appears, but is never murdered. Instead, at the beginning of the show he is miss heard and the show opens with a fish face slapping dance in Finland, not England. The army of the Knights that say “Ni”, were played by children. One of the biggest differences occurs after Lancelot charges the castle, where he expects to find a damsel in distress. Instead, he finds the effeminate son of the castle’s lord. Instead of slaying the son, Lancelot defends him and in turn is out as gay. The Lady of the Lake is developed into the female lead and is eventually paired off with Arthur at the end of the show.

We missed it, but Joanie must have seen Eric Idle, when he made a surprise appearance at the Muny, on opening night. The sports announcer, Bob Costas, plays God, or at least his voice. The Muny’s new LED screen provides the animation for God. There was one minor disappointment about last night’s performance, we didn’t get to experience the Muny’s new “air-conditioning” system. In between our morning bicycle ride and the evening’s curtain call, it stormed all afternoon. There was lots of thunder and lightning, but not much rain. Consequently, come showtime, it was too cool to run the new system. Anne ended up wearing her rain jacket throughout the performance. The new “air-conditioning” system is a set of quiet overhead fans that can be run during the performance. The Muny has always had fans, but the old ones were so noisy that they were only operated in between acts.

And…always look on the bright side of life…
Always look on the light side of life…