REVIEW: Surrender to Bits in 'Spamalot'
By MICHAEL KUCHWARA, AP Drama Critic
NEW YORK -
The silly season is now upon us, and there may only be one way to deal
with the comic lunacy currently holding forth on stage at Broadway's
Shubert Theatre. Surrender.
Otherwise, you will find yourself at sea
during "Monty Python's Spamalot," a lavish, live-action, aggressively
antic version of a certain cult movie put together three decades ago by
a group of seriously funny Brits.
You have to be grateful that its
creators, as well as its savvy director, Mike Nichols, didn't call the
show, "Monty Python and the Holy Grail — the Musical," the film on
which this show is based and which includes the line, "'I eat ham and
jam and spam a lot!"
Its authors have had to walk a precarious
line — pleasing those fanatical Python fans who have committed the
entire movie script to memory while satisfying other theatergoers who
never have heard of the Killer Rabbit, the Knights who say "Ni" or that
cheeky French soldier who hurls insults such as "your mother was a
hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!"
For much of the time, they succeed.
The original Python bits, still witty
after all those years, are replicated with surprising authenticity by a
strong cast that includes David Hyde Pierce, Tim Curry (news) and Hank Azaria (news).
Curry, with his delightful Cheshire cat
grin, has a natural authority as Arthur, the king in search of a few
knights to help him find the Holy Grail. He's the glue that holds
together the episodic story line, concocted from the original by Python
veteran Eric Idle, who also wrote the sprightly lyrics and co-wrote the
music with John Du Prez.
The two others play multiple roles.
Pierce spends most of the evening as the brave Sir Robin, the
less-than-courageous knight, while Azaria is particularly fine as the
odious French taunter and as Tim the Enchanter.
Which brings us to the rest of the
musical. To fill out the story, Idle has added a new plot, in which
Arthur and his knights must perform that most daunting of tasks —
bringing a musical to Broadway.
This allows Idle and company to poke fun
at the entire genre, from "Fiddler on the Roof" to "The Phantom of the
Opera." The attempt is similar to what Gerard Alessandrini has been
doing so well off-Broadway for more than two decades with his
"Forbidden Broadway" revues. Only "Spamalot" does it on a much more
lavish scale — and with middling' success.
The show indulges every bit of
musical-comedy madness — tweaking, twirling and more often that not
sending up those cliches so dear to hearts of those who love shows. In
Act 1, there's a particularly delicious spoof of Las Vegas revues that
features some gloriously tacky dance routines by the show's promising
choreographer, Casey Nicholaw, and a star turn by Sara Ramirez, who
seems to be channeling Liza Minnelli (news) by way of Cher.
Ramirez is a voluptuous, vocally powerful
siren who plays the Lady in the Lake, a part that basically evaporates
after intermission. So the authors have given her a song called "The
Diva's Lament" in the second half to complain about her role.
Unfortunately, it fizzles into strenuousness.
One of the most consistent pleasures in
"Spamalot" is watching several members of the supporting cast get a
moment in the spotlight.
Besides Ramirez, they include Michael McGrath (news),
a superb song-and-dance man, playing Arthur's dutiful factotum, the
aptly named Patsy. He brings down the house with a Gene Kelly-inspired
number called "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life," a song actually
lifted from another Python film, "Life of Brian."
Christopher Sieber, gets to primp as Sir
(Dennis) Galahad, and ham it up with Ramirez as they work their way
hilariously through an Andrew Lloyd Webber-style love duet called "The
Song That Goes Like This."
And Christian Borle is endearingly goofy
as Not Dead Fred, the song-and-dance corpse, and as Herbert, the gayest
of princes, who finds a soul mate in Sir Lancelot, played by Azaria. If
their big number predictably recycles Peter Allen (with a bit of Carmen
Miranda thrown in for good measure), they play the cliche for all it's
worth.
Another cliche that gets a workout — and
uproarious audience approval — is a Gilbert and Sullivan patter song
that has Sir Robin proclaiming, "You won't succeed on Broadway if don't
have any Jews," a topic mined with greater wit (believe it or not) in
"The Producers."
But then recognition seems to be the name
of the game in "Spamalot" — whether in the show's celebration of its
cinematic predecessor, the collective works of the American and British
musical theater or politically incorrect stereotypes. Nichols and
company make it go down easily. And besides, that Killer Rabbit sure is
cute.
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