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“Spamalot” Opens in West End
Monty Python’s Tony-award-winning show “Spamalot” opened at the Palace Theatre earlier this week, and the reviews were about as good in London as they were in New York. There, the critics were delighted to see American musical theatre given the treatment it deserves (satire) along with a deflating of local boy made good Andrew Lloyd-Webber (Baron Lloyd-Webber to those who care). While a few were disappointed that it was too much like the film (yes, they said that), the reviews are largely between excellent and rave.
“Spamalot,” of course, is the Eric Idle and John Du Prez musical stage version of the film “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” lovingly ripped-off as the boys put it. All the film bits are there, the killer rabbit, the Knights Who Say Ni, and the cocoanuts banging together rather than horses (it was a budgetary concern when the film was shot). The music, though, is new, and it is the music that made this the hottest ticket in New York.
Taking on the Broadway musical didn’t seem to daunt Messrs. Idle and Du Prez. Paul Taylor of the Independent wrote,
You haven't lived until you've seen a monk and a nun re-doing the Gene Kelly/Cyd Charisse he-throws-leggy-and-taller-woman-all-over-the-place dance (a nutty reference to the "Slaughter on Tenth Avenue" sequence in Singin' in the Rain ) or heard a song that is all about how at this stage of a musical you have to have this kind of song (the joke being that it is about nothing else than that) or - and here I felt that I might actually die of laughter - hearing the extraordinarily talented Hannah Waddington (who plays the Lady in the Lake) throw all words aside and do an insanely "vocalised" version of every shabby, show-off trick ever visited upon a song by a prodigious but terminally tasteless female ballad singer.
Lambasting “Fiddler on the Roof,” an archetype of the form, the show has kept the New York line, “we won't succeed in show business if we don’t have any Jews” -- far less true in London, and not really all that true in New York anymore (if indeed it ever was). Taking on Lord Webber, “The Song That Goes Like This” announces “now we can go straight into the middle-eight,” as does just about everything he’s written since “Evita.” The result is brilliance.
Not everyone thought so, though. Michael Billington of the Guardian wrote, “I suppose we should only be grateful Idle didn't manage to work in the dead-parrot routine,” and “with hand on heart, I'd much rather watch Lerner and Loewe's Camelot than Eric Idle's smart-arsed Spamalot.” Charles Spencer of the Telegraph seemed to anticipate this with his review, “I suppose there are a few people who won’t enjoy Spamalot. The chronically depressed, the criminally insane and the snootier drama critics may find it hard to raise a smile.” He concluded with “It’s a wonderful night, and I fart in the general direction of anyone who says otherwise.” Ah yes, the Guardian and the Telegraph, bastions of British theatre criticism.
© Copyright 2006 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.
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