Spamalot

Back in late October or so, I heard that the traveling cast of Spamalot was coming to Birmingham in April. I got all excited, asked a few friends if they wanted to go, and promptly neglected to do anything about it, like...oh, I don't know...get tickets.

Last week, I happened to notice that Spamalot was here. Whoops...

Fortunately, I have a co-worker who is not averse to a) Monty Python, b) $36 tickets, or c) impromptu Thursday night shows, and so we got our nosebleed seats and two hours of Pythony goodness.

I love Holy Grail. I can't remember if we watched it in seventh-grade social studies (we did see other historical films in that class, like Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure and Aladdin), but it's a wonderfully wacky take on the Arthurian canon. (It's even better after Malory.) The musical, by necessity, deviates in several places from the film, but if you go into it with the understanding that it's a completely different creature "lovingly ripped off" the original, it's quite entertaining. While Spamalot does stand alone, familiarity with the film helps, if only because you catch a few of the gags. (The first "show" listed in the Playbill, for instance, is about Finland and features a moose ballet troupe. And while Castle Anthrax never makes an appearance, those girls' white outfits look awfully familiar.) What's brilliant is that the writers took a film that poked fun at the vehicle and gave it a Broadway treatment - numbers like "Whatever Happened to My Part?" (and the post-Spears lyric changes) are priceless.

My favorite moment has to be the duet between Galahad and the Lady of the Lake, when they appear onstage in a tiny boat, under a chandelier that had to have been used in Phantom in another life, and sing the romantic ballad of the show, "The Song That Goes Like This":

I'll sing it in your face
While we both embrace
And then
We change
The key...

Brilliant.