No, you do not have to be a lifelong Monty Python fanatic to have a great time at "Spamalot," the big Broadway show that opened last night at the Shubert Theatre. You just have to have a healthy sense of humor. The important thing to know about this show is that it is directed by Mike Nichols, who has been a certified Broadway comic genius since the early '60s. Nichols takes the dryly amusing stuff in the movie "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" and makes it genuinely funny.
Like you-can't-prevent-yourself-from-laughing-even-if-you-want-to funny.
The show has a book and lyrics by Monty Python veteran Eric Idle (who, of course, starred in the 1975 movie), with music by Idle and John Du Prez.
We shall not be playing the cast album of "Spamalot" in 10 years. The score is about on a par with the totally forgettable music in "The Producers," the show to which this 18-karat Broadway hit is already being compared, quite rightly.
Idle, who has done a dandy job of making a Broadway show out of a cheaply made underground cult movie, uses songs from various Monty Python films. Perhaps the only one close to memorable is "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life," which is from "Monthy Python's Life of Brian."
But it's not the score that matters; it's the comic energy of the piece. And that energy is unflagging, zipping through the appallingly — or appealingly? — silly story of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, with nary a moment's pause.
Silly? Yes. But silly like a fox. A fox that knows Broadway in all its silliness.
Like "The Producers," but more so, the show keeps commenting on what it is — and where it is. It's on Broadway, believe it or not.
Believe it: "Spamalot" is a pure entertainment about Broadway entertainment.
And somehow (thank you, Mike Nichols), it avoids being hostile and it avoids being cute.
The priceless Tim Curry is at the heart of the show as King Arthur, who with his plummy Noel Coward accent and poker face keeps a regal dignity — and royal sense of entitlement — even when cows (or worse) are being hurled through the air at him and his knights.
David Hyde Pierce, fresh from his 11-year TV gig as Dr. Niles Crane on "Frasier," is here in several roles and has one of the true showstopping songs. More on that in a moment.
And if a star can be born on Broadway these days, one is in Sara Ramirez, a totally winning presence, who plays The Lady of the Lake.
She comes out in Act 2 to sing her enraged protest at being — seemingly — left out of the show. The song is called "The Diva's Lament."
Right from the start, you can see Nichols' work in subtly sharpening the material.
The early scene with a cartful of dead bodies — it is 932 A.D. — in which someone protests "I'm not dead yet," seems ageist and mean in the movie, as an old man is clubbed to death. Here the nearly dead person (Christian Borle) is a young man. He has his own song: "I Am Not Dead Yet." And he refuses to die. It's much funnier.
Ditto the French "taunters," led by Hank Azaria. With just a subtle elongation of their helmets, they now look like the Coneheads of "Saturday Night Live" ("We are from France!"). The endlessly witty costumes and the sets, which make ample use of the lovely Monty Python animated graphics, are by Tim Hatley.
Nichols resists the current temptation to bash the French and instead serves the French stuff straight with a sudden panoply of clichés of French characters.
The show makes constant fun of the current conventions of Broadway, from the bloated songfests of Andrew Lloyd Webber (there's a hilarious number called "The Song That Goes Like This") to the mock audience participation (with Polaroid camera) in Dame Edna Everage's shows.
The most controversial of these satirical set pieces is likely to be Pierce's showstopper, which declares, "You won't succeed on Broadway if you don't have any Jews." After a giant, gleaming Star of David descends, Pierce and a male chorus do a precise parody of the bottle dance from "Fiddler on the Roof," with Holy Grails instead of bottles on their hats.
Later, Sir Lancelot (Azaria) has a late coming-out as a gay man, greeted by a Peter Allen-style "Carnival in Rio" chorus line. Surrender! It is very funny.
A Finnish interlude, along with characters who constantly seem to wander in — invited or not — from other Broadway shows, keeps costumer Hatley very busy. And very amusingly creative.
The wonderful choreography is by Casey Nicholaw.
But we didn't mention the killer rabbit, or the valiant Black Knight who gets all his limbs cut off and keeps fighting, or the knights who say "Ni!"
You'll just have to go see it all for yourself.
If you can get a ticket.
Which won't be easy after today.
