Spamalot Musical Hits The West End
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Usually, musicals fill us with terror and confusion. They’re like rubbish films, except they stop to sing songs all the time, and the actors can see if you try and catch a crafty nap during the boring bits.
The exception to the musical rule appears to be Spamalot, Eric Idle’s musical rejigging of Monty Python And The Holy Grail. It’s been exceptionally popular in America, and today it was launched in the West End of London. And we’re a touch confused. While it’s good that a show like Spamalot has pricked the self-importance of the musical world, we’re not really that keen on sitting in a theatre with a bunch of wacky students who are just going to shout out every line of the show anyway, making money for the bloke who wrote the theme tune to One Foot In The Grave.
Spamalot launched in the West End of London today, ahead of its
opening night here in October. Eric Idle (DVDs) must be hoping that the London
run of Spamalot replicates the success the show has had in America,
where it has won three Tony awards and takes about $1 million a week.
When Spamalot comes to England, Tim Curry (The scary clown from It
and, um, some other stuff) will be playing King Arthur, with
Shakespearean actor Simon Russell Beale taking over three months later.
And at the Spamalot launch, spam sandwiches were handed around to
invited guests, and Eric Idle was predictably unable to give a straight
answer to anything. According to Reuters:
He brought one of the producers on stage to sign a cheque, quipping
"That’s a rare enough sight on Broadway", and he got the set designer
to shine a torch on tiny Polaroid shots of the lavish set designs. Idle
said director Mike Nichols only won a Tony award for the Broadway
production "by shamelessly spreading rumours that he was dying." Idle told the launch audience: "I am the sixth nicest of the ex-Pythons and certainly the cheapest. "I
didn’t want to do this for a living," he added, setting up one of the
Pythons’ most famous lines — "I wanted to be a lumberjack."
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