"Monty Python's Spamalot"

kurinuku · **Posted:** Sun Feb 29, 2004 11:56 pm

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Chicago to Eat Ham as 'Monty Python's Spamalot' Debuts in December Before Broadway

By ERNIO HERNANDEZ
Playbill On-Line on Yahoo
February 27, 2004

Monty Python's Spamalot - the Broadway-bound stage musical based on the British sketch comedy team's film "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" - will have its world premiere at Chicago's Shubert Theatre, Dec. 21, 2004 to Jan. 16, 2005.

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kurinuku · **Posted:** Sat Dec 11, 2004 10:35 am

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Mike Nichols' rules for directing a musical

By HEDY WEISS
The Chicago Sun-Times
December 10, 2004

Mike Nichols arrived in Chicago on Thursday to begin technical rehearsals for "Monty Python's Spamalot," the musical by Pythonite Eric Idle and John Du Prez inspired by the hit 1975 film "Monty Python and the Holy Grail."

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Stuart Sweeney · **Posted:** Tue Dec 21, 2004 3:04 am

Idle musings bring Python gang out of the can and on to the stage
Monty Python's flatulent Frenchmen, knights who say 'Ni', killer rabbits and holy hand grenades are to get the musical treatment. By James Bone for The Times:

AND now for something completely different . . . after the recent success of a Broadway version of The Producers, Monty Python and the Holy Grail is to be the next classic comedy to be reborn as a musical.

With the approval of his fellow Pythons, Eric Idle will launch a singing and dancing version of the 1975 film next week at a theatre in Chicago.

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Stuart Sweeney · **Posted:** Tue Dec 28, 2004 9:04 am

Ovation for Eric Idle's Python musical
From James Bone in Chicago for The Times

KING ARTHUR wants to star on Broadway, his manservant Patsy is Jewish (or at least “half-Jewish”), Sir Lancelot is gay — and the audience loved it.

Spamalot, Eric Idle’s new musical “lovingly ripped off” from the cult film Monty Python and the Holy Grail, won a rapturous standing ovation from its first paying audience at the Shubert Theatre in Chicago on Tuesday night.

As an encore, the crowd of Python addicts old and young sang along with Idle’s merry anthem, Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, sneakily smuggled into the show from the comedy troupe’s film The Life of Brian.

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kurinuku · **Posted:** Tue Jan 11, 2005 11:34 am

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Bright knights, big city

by RICHARD CHRISTIANSEN
the Guardian

The new show, which has just opened its trial run in Chicago, is mainly the work of Eric Idle, one of the six Pythons who appeared in the 1975 film. He is the current production's librettist, lyricist and co-composer, with John Du Prez. John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones and Michael Palin, the four other surviving members of the sextet (Graham Chapman died in 1989), have let Idle loose on the musical with their blessings. They may have sown the seeds of the show, but their presence here is limited to Cleese's voice in the recorded role of God.

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kurinuku · **Posted:** Sat Jan 15, 2005 7:35 am

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Chicago eats up 'Spamalot'

by DAMIEN JAQUES
the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

In fact, one could accurately describe "Spamalot" as Monty Python meets Mel Brooks. The new show is faithful to "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" and even includes snippets of familiar bits from other Python vehicles, but when "Spamalot" needs to be filled out to meet the expectations of a 2 1/2-hour Broadway musical, the new material looks decidedly Brooksian.

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kurinuku · **Posted:** Fri Mar 18, 2005 5:43 am

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The Pythons who found the Grail

by CHARLES SPENCER
the Daily Telegraph

Spamalot, which opened last night, may not be in quite the same league as The Producers when it comes to outrageous invention or narrative momentum, and Mike Nichols's engagingly ramshackle production can't match the drop-dead glitz of Susan Stroman's staging of the Mel Brooks musical. Nevertheless, it's exceedingly silly - and huge fun.

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Stuart Sweeney · **Posted:** Fri Mar 25, 2005 2:10 am

New York Notebook
By Clive Barnes for The Stage

Monty Python can rest in peace - if it ever was at peace - for Eric Idle’s musical Spamalot will delight lovers of Mr Python and his immortal Flying Circus, devotees of Spam and even those benighted souls who have never heard of either. It’s going to give pastiche a good name. The bizarre, merry lunacy of the Monty Python gangsters, with their curiously British yet
marvellously exportable sensibility, must be a fiendishly difficult thing to bottle for Broadway consumption. How funny are coconuts economically doubling away as horses, or a killer rabbit executing his rabid mayhem, for people who are not already aficionados, not to mention already a little bit nuts?

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Glebb · **Posted:** Wed Mar 30, 2005 7:07 pm

Saw this show - previews in Chicago in late Dec. Lots of fun. I had reservations not knowing Monty Python too well. Not a problem. The show is funny like The Producers.

Azlan · **Posted:** Sun Apr 10, 2005 11:17 am

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Broadway's 'Spamalot' hams it up, fits young males' taste

By Jesse McKinley
NEW YORK TIMES
Contra Costa Times

NEW YORK - The other night at the Shubert Theatre, home of the freshly minted hit "Spamalot," there were lines everywhere. <a href=http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/entertainment/11359481.htm target=_blank>more</a>

kurinuku · **Posted:** Fri Jun 03, 2005 11:10 am

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'Spamalot' landsalot of Tony nominations
by HEDY WEISS for the Chicago Sun-Times

King Arthur may have had his Knights of the Round Table. But "Spamalot," the Monty Python-inspired musical that began life in Chicago last winter, has 14 Tony nominations.

published: May 11, 2005

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Stuart Sweeney · **Posted:** Wed Jul 27, 2005 12:54 am

I've consolidated two topics:

nypost gal posted: 28 Feb 2005 05:52 pm

Mad about Spamalot? Desperately seeking Python fans who've seen the show, either in chicago or NY, multiple times - and aren't afraid to say so (in print). Please email Barb Hoffman at barbh@nypost.com or call me: (212) 930-8661

Thanks!

Stuart Sweeney · **Posted:** Wed Jul 27, 2005 12:55 am

Vegas beckons for Python musical
From the BBC website

An abridged version of the Broadway hit Spamalot will open in Las Vegas in 2007 at a custom-built theatre.
Casino impresario Steve Wynn plans to stage the show at his Nevada resort at a cost of more than $50m (£28.6m).

The musical, written by Eric Idle and based on the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail, opened on Broadway in March and won three Tonys in June.

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Cassandra · **Posted:** Wed Feb 22, 2006 8:31 am

Yesterday morning as I made my way to work on the number 29 bendy bus along Charing Cross Road the sight of the medieval monk with his placard "Grail Sale" standing on the corner of Cambridge Circus actually brought a smile to my face (rare at that time of the morning). The arrow on his board pointed to the Palace Theatre now adorned by a gigantic bare foot above the entrance advertising the musical Spamalot. Apparently there was a witch outside too who I didn't spot. Wonderful to hear that something other than a foul Andrew Lloyd Webber musical is to be shown at that dazzlingly ornate Victorian Theatre: More about the show in this Independent article.

http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/theatre/news/article346958.ece[/url][/b]

Azlan · **Posted:** Mon Jul 17, 2006 7:55 pm

This is one of the funniest shows I've seen in a long time. Alright, I have to admit I am a long-time Python fan but I do believe this show appeals to everyone. Knowing the Python sketches however like "Looking at the Bright Side of Life" and "The Knights who say 'Ni!'" gives it that extra boost!

And just to illustrate the extent of the Python phenomenon, here are some trivia facts from Wikipedia:

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On May 4, 1982, during the Falklands War, the Royal Navy destroyer HMS Sheffield was fatally struck by a French-built Exocet anti-ship missile launched from an Argentine Air Force jet. As the crew gathered on the burning deck for rescue, they struck up a chorus of "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" from Life of Brian.

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A fossil of a previously unknown species of large prehistoric snake from the Miocene was discovered in Riversleigh, Queensland, Australia, in 1985. The Australian palaeontologist who discovered the fossil snake was a Monty Python fan, and he gave the snake the taxonomic name of Montypythonoides riversleighensis in honour of the Monty Python team.(Translated from Latin to English, Montypythonoides means "like Monty Python".)


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