How I sold panto to the Yanks
by ERIC IDLE for the Daily Telegraph

Finally, in the '90s, I was working on a CD-Rom version of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and I realised that, if you could change the movie into a computer game, it would adapt even better into a musical. But would the Pythons consent to us adapting it? We decided the only way to find out was to bite the bullet and show them how it might be.

So I wrote a book and lyrics, and John and I recorded half a dozen songs, of which one was a madly improvised piece of nonsense called The Song That Goes Like This: "Once in every show, there comes a song like this/Oh, where is the song that goes like this?"

published: September 6, 2006

Tim Curry has made Spamalot his kingdom
by JASPERS REES for the Sunday Times

When Eric Idle’s Tony-winning hit arrives on these shores, King Arthur’s smile will be even broader. “I had that big, insane grin on my face,” says Tim Curry, who alone of the original cast will reprise the role he played in New York, “because I was so happy to be part of it. Mike Nichols (the director) said, ‘Once we’ve got the thing started, we’d love you to go and open it wherever you want to.’ I said, ‘Nobody has ever said that to me before, and I would love to do it in London.’ It’s a wonderful way to come home”.

published: September 10, 2006

And now for something completely difficult ...
by DAVE EGGERS for the Guardian

"I think they will laugh," he says.

It is difficult to know exactly what Idle means, but for the sake of argument, let's take him at his word. Perhaps he means just that: that people will laugh. It seems likely enough. After all, Idle's confidence in the show has been steady since its conception. "I knew it was funny and therefore virtually unstoppable but I never foresaw a Tony for best musical or such a worldwide hit. I did know, of course, that through box-office grosses or some kind of sexual harassment lawsuit, I would be rich."

published: September 13, 2006

And now for something completely funny...
by PAULl TAYLOR for the Independent
published: October 17, 2006

The good nature, which lets the air into a show that would otherwise feel a bit relentless and one-note, comes from two main aspects. First, there's the endearingly bonkers notion of making the characters in a medieval Grail legend the conscious creatures of an aspiring Broadway/Hollywood musical. You haven't lived until you've seen a monk and a nun re-doing the Gene Kelly/Cyd Charisse he-throws-leggy-and-taller-woman-all-over-the-place dance...

Monty Python's Spamalot
by LYN GARDNER for the Guardian
published: January 24, 2007

The adverts are witty; the posters hilarious and Michael Palin's Finnish programme notes a delight. The show itself? Well that's so-so, alternately laugh-out-loud silly and a teeny bit tedious, even though it now stars Simon Russell Beale clip-clopping around the stage to the sound of two coconut halves being banged together.

Spamalot
by SAM MARLOWE for the Times
published: January 25, 2007

Luckily, Eric Idle and John Du Prez’s much-lauded musical is more than simply a fan-pleasing reheated mega-mix of best bits — and the addition to the London cast of Simon Russell Beale, whose bumbling, pop-eyed King Arthur previously graced the Broadway production, should have audiences doing a fish-slapping dance of delight.