18 January
Idle on Broadway
I came to New York City to watch Broadway shows. I managed to purchase my Broadway tickets in New York before even travelling to New York. The most treasured ticket of all was for the musical ‘Spamalot’. I love anything Monty Python, so when I heard about ‘Spamalot’ opening up on Broadway, I made sure I had plenty of vacation time stored up. If I couldn’t get tickets for ‘Spamalot’ on the week of my vacation, then my second choice for a Broadway ticket was for ‘Burn the Floor’. Never heard of it, but I love dancing, and this musical is all about dancing!
Suspense over, I found a ticket available on the date in needed. So, here’s my own take on ‘Spamalot’. Naturally it follows the madcap adventure of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table with their quest to find the Holy Grail. I got the opportunity to see a long chorus line of legless knights, a killer rabbit, beautiful dancing divas, and men, this time with legs, in tights. As I’ve said, I’m a huge Monty Python fan and I’m a huge fan of musicals, so I wasn’t disappointed with this production.
The musical has a cast doubling up on characters, like Lancelot, Robin, Bedevere, Galahad and Patsy have to play other characters. The song are mostly new, except for the reprised ones. I found the new score much more melodic and witty, and some of the songs were absolutely made fun of Broadway itself! For example, ‘You Won’t Succeed on Broadway’ number was very, very amusing.
‘Spamalot’ was written by Eric Idle and he does a fantastic job of successfully producing a magical and irreverent piece of pure entertainment. Mike Nichols directed the musical, which he did a fine job with detailed staging and keeping the fun rolling along. The musical features a superb cast: King Arthur is played by Tim Curry, David Hyde is Sir Robin and Sir Lancelot is played by Hank Azaria. The intriguing set was designed by Tim Hatley.
Sometimes, during the musical, I did find the irreverence to be a bit dreary, which is unusual for the sharp edged trademark of any Python production, but all-in-all, the price I paid for this production was worth it. I highly recommend seeing this gem before the star studded power is replaced by unknowns.
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