Spamalot

Posted on 2007/05/16 23:44:58 (May 2007).

[Wednesday 16th May]
Prompted my my recent trip to see Avenue Q, I booked tickets for Chie and I to go and see Spamalot tonight. It was OK I suppose, nice to do something a bit different in the evening, but if I'm honest I came away feeling a bit disappointed in it.

It's a combination of factors I think. First of all our seats weren't that great - I mean we could see OK and everything but the Palace Theatre seems to have hugely uncomfortable seats with almost no legroom - the Noel Coward Theatre the other day was much more spacious. Apparently we'd been "upgraded" as well, although I'm not hugely convinced the seats they actually gave us were any better than the ones I'd originally booked.

Anyway, petty whinges like that aside, despite being a huge fan of all things Python, I found this production just sort of lacked something. I don't really know how they could have made it work though. It swung from an extreme of being very Pythony in places to another extreme of not very Pythony at all, but in both of these I was left feeling a bit dissatisfied. When they followed the original exactly it felt like money for old rope, and they were at times a little lacklustre in their delivery (as you can imagine having done the same show every day for weeks on end) but the new material (i.e. most of the songs) left me feeling "well this isn't really Python". So I suppose I was impossible to please: they were damned if they did, and damned if they didn't.

It did have some things to recommend it though I suppose. I liked the Finland song at the start, and in a couple of places they did make subtle additions to the original lines which I found quite amusing:

"Where are we going to find a shrubbery?"
"Perhaps we could make one... out of cats."

I also appreciated the reference to the parrot sketch in the "Where d'you get the coconuts?" scene at the start

...and actually I thought the actress who played the lady of the lake was pretty good in places too, she had a really powerful voice and there were a few laughs to be had just out of her unusual way of singing.

Generally though the laughs were pretty spread out for me. Maybe I spoiled it for myself by just knowing the scripts too well - even if I watch the original film now it doesn't make me laugh out loud, more of a sense of warm familiarity. When you have over watched something as much as I have it is obviously going to be the nuances that you start to appreciate, and these obviously get lost when other people play the roles. For example, in the Black Knight scene, the blood and gore and all the variations of "tis but a scratch" are no longer the bits I enjoy, so much as watching the delightfully nonchalant and farcical way that Graham Chapman moves about when fighting. Arthur in Spamalot didn't quite have this same detached air about him that is present in so many of Chapman's characters.

Perhaps Python is just something that shouldn't be attempted by other actors. I recall on one of the Amnesty International shows a recreation of the Four Yorkshiremen sketch done by Harry Enfield, Eddie Izzard, Vic Reeves and Alan Rickman. Harry Enfield to my mind just didn't get Python at all - he just did a silly voice and added "T'" to the start of all the nouns. Eddie Izzard is clearly a devotee and was making a concerted effort to do an authentic recreation. Vic Reeves adlibbed an assortment of juxtapositions and non-sequiturs which whilst deviating from the original script were Pythonesque in nature, although perhaps a different brand of Python to that we see in the Four Yorkshiremen.

So that's the sort of thing I'd like to have seen from Spamalot - new material but in the style of the original Python.

Perhaps one has to accept that Python was a finite thing, a product of a particular age and so on, and it just couldn't really be the same if we tried to re-create it or add to it today. Still, if nothing else Spamalot is a pleasant reminder that it isn't just a minority interest of university types - it was a well packed theatre and a very mixed audience, even on a Wednesday night.

Hmmm. Interesting and useful review. I'd read a lot about the production and no-one seemed overly enthusiastic, but then (not having seen it) I was wondering if modern sensibilities just didn't "get" the humour. Now I realise it was the actual production which lacked something... Thanks!

Posted by Nigel at 2007/05/17 09:10:08.

Are you a Python fan then Nigel?

Posted by John at 2007/05/17 12:18:26.

Yes, but... Not "encyclopedic" like some folks. I've probably got the films on VHS - my favourite is Life of Brian. I have Eric Idle's single of "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" etc. Not much, but I seem to be able to appreciate the guys the older I get... for some odd reason!

Posted by Nigel at 2007/05/17 21:36:26.

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