One of my favourite lines from Monty Python and the Holy Grail occurs immediately after the song that gives this musical adaptation its title: “On second thoughts, let’s not go to Camelot. It is a silly place.” As if silliness were ever going to be a barrier for a member of Monty Python, the English comedians who built their reputation on the sublimity of their ridiculousness.
The 1975 film – their first, after the success of their utterly bonkers television sketch comedy Monty Python’s Flying Circus – is a riot of visual gags, literary parody and surprisingly sharp medieval-themed satire. Shoving large chunks of it on stage will generate laughs, but whether it makes a satisfying translation to musical theatre is another matter. The result, with book and lyrics by original Python cast member Eric Idle, is certainly not a musical in the traditional sense of having a score and songs that evolve the plot and characters; it’s more like a musical revue, cobbled and approximate.
An elaborate piss-take of Arthurian legend, Spamalot tells the tale of King Arthur (Stephen Curry) and his quest for the holy grail – although, like the film, its grasp on narrative clarity is deliberately tenuous. Many of the key scenes from the original are included with minor cuts and alterations: we get servant Patsy (Jamie Rolton) clicking coconuts together to make the sound of horse hooves in lieu of actual horses; we get the Knights Who Say Ni and their demands for a shrubbery (sadly only the one); we get one of the funniest exchanges in all of Python, as Dennis the peasant (Ethan Jones) argues that “strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government”, as true today as it was in plague-ridden medieval England.
