Monty Python's Spamalot debuts: Reviews, other stuff

Photo by Aubrey Reuben

Monty Python's Spamalot debuted last Thursday. All the living Pythons attended and took a curtain call (Graham Chapman was represented by an urn and cardboard cutout). Total advance ticket sales have hit $18 million.

Will there ever again be a rapturous musical that isn't a parody of other
musicals?
'Spamalot' arrives with gusto (Ed Siegel, Boston Herald)

The killer rabbit makes an appearance in Spamalot, along with the flatulent Frenchman and the head-banging monks. But something is missing from this frequently enjoyable, relentlessly on-message conflation of Monty Python shtick with Broadway razzmatazz.
Spamalot (Eric Grode, Broadway.com)

LOOK at These Spamalot Pictures, You Sons of Silly People! (Broadway.com)

"Very silly costumes, some of them are heavy and sweaty, some aren't. Some don't have enough clothing. Some have too much clothing, but it's great. To wear that silly knight outfit is one of the thrills--just to try that on is one of the thrills in my life." --Hank Azaria on playing several different characters throughout the show
Quotable Quotes: Chewing the Fat with the Company of Spamalot (Broadway.com)

Insanity reigns on Broadway as Monty Python's Eric Idle remakes one of the legendary loony league's cult films into a farcical musical. Traditions are thrown over the wall like cows launched from a catapult.
Drama Dispatch: March 21, 2005: 'Monty Python's Spamalot' (David Sheward, Backstage.com)

More than 30 years after the British comedy troupe Monty Python began tickling funny bones on both sides of the Atlantic, the Broadway debut of "Monty Python's Spamalot" proved fans are still chuckling.
'Python's Spamalot' wows audience (AP, Cnn.com)

Spamalot Cast Recording To Go On Sale May 3 (Daily Llama)

Go ahead and believe the buzz emanating from the Shubert Theatre. Eric Idle and Mike Nichols have indeed fashioned a Holy Grail of a big, crowd-pleasing Broadway musical comedy out of the 1975 cult film "Monty Python and the Holy Grail." The show slays 'em like Excalibur.
Fool Monty: holy gales of laughter (Gordon Cox, Newsday)

Silliness is an assertion of youthfulness, a playful raspberry blown at everything that weighs us down—history, theology, psychology, and, especially, mortality. If you’re looking for a theme to the inspired antics of “Spamalot” (at the Shubert)—a musical that is, according to the marquee, “lovingly ripped off” from the movie “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”—you’ll find it on a twenty-five-dollar T-shirt that’s for sale in the lobby: “i’m not dead yet . . .,” it says.
March Madness (John Lahr, The New Yorker)

BLOODY fantastic. Gorgeously silly. Superlative and better. "Monty Python's Spamalot," dazzlingly staged by Mike Nichols, opened last night at the Shubert Theatre, where it will hereafter delight lovers of Python's immortal Flying Circus, devotees of Spam and even those who've never heard of either.
Grand Slam-alot (Clive Barnes, New York Post)

The moments when "Spamalot" rises into the ether are those in which it pays homage - à la "The Producers" - to other kinds of Broadway musicals, with bobble-headed nods to the Vegas revue thrown in. The "Knights of the Round Table" number that introduces the swinging pleasure palace called Camelot is a deliciously cheesy, cheesecake-laden floor show, with Arthur morphing into a Rat Pack-style master of ceremonies. (Casey Nicholaw is the choreographer.)
A Quest Beyond the Grail (Ben Brantley, New York Times, 3/18/05, reg. req'd)

Cult-comedy royalty—the Brit-twit variety—was the last to arrive at the Shubert March 17 for the Broadway launch of Monty Python's Spamalot, and it was a grand, grand illusion.
Monty Python's Spamalot: Knights' Night Out (Harry Haun,Playbill.com)

PHOTO CALL: Broadway Has Been Knighted: Spamalot Storms the Shubert Theatre (Playbill.com)

Having enjoyed Monty Python's Spamalot, I can say that I've seen the immediate future of musical comedy, and it's the past.
Monty Python's Spamalot (David Finkle, Theatermania.com)

In Monty Python's Spamalot (* * * out of four), the new musical "lovingly ripped off" from the 1975 film Monty Python and the Holy Grail, England's great leader of legend is at once reduced and rejuvenated by some of the funniest antics introduced on a Broadway stage since ... well, since the dawn of another musical lovingly ripped off from a cult comedy classic: Mel Brooks'
The Producers.'Spamalot': And now for something ... (Elysa Gardner, USAToday.com)

With "hit" practically tattooed on its dizzy derriere, Monty Python's "Spamalot" opened last night at the Sam S. Shubert Theatre in a musical production so eager to please that it would, if it could, order you a cocktail and serve you a home-cooked meal.
'Spamalot': Python Fans Get the Full Monty (Peter Marks, Washington Post, reg. req'd)

tags: theatre, musical, Monty Python, Spamalot, New York