It’s been nearly two decades since Eric Idle debuted his stage musical version of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, a combination of Python silliness and Broadway spoofing that nabbed the Tony for Best Musical in 2005 and made a star out of future Grey’s Anatomy veteran Sara Ramirez. Now the show is back on Broadway, in a revival that has the second-generation feel of a regional theater production that’s somehow made it to the big time. (Director-choreographer Josh Rhodes’s serviceable production was first mounted last summer at Washington, D.C.’s Kennedy Center.) Paul Tate dePoo III’s low-rent set and projection design relies on decidedly two-dimensional flats and animation that looks cruder than what Terry Gilliam produced for Python’s original low-budget films.
The Broadway original featured sensational turns from multiple stage veterans. Indeed, five members of that cast picked up Tony nominations — in addition to Ramirez, there was Tim Curry as Arthur, Hank Azaria as Lancelot (and a bunch of John Cleese’s secondary characters), Christopher Sieber as Galahad and the late Michael McGrath as Arthur’s coconut-banging riding companion, Patsy.
It’s telling that the new production boasts fewer standouts among the cast. Leslie Rodriguez Kritzer is having a blast belting out her numbers as the Lady of the Lake, adding riffs, runs and verbal nods to everything from Elphaba in Wicked to shameless American Idol contestants. And Ethan Slater, who was such a wide-eyed delight leading SpongeBob SquarePants several seasons ago, busts out some hilarious physical comedy in quick-changing roles from the sober narrator to the fey Prince Herbert.
James Monroe Iglehart proves a stolid Arthur, with Christopher Fitzgerald as his reliable foil Patsy. But Nik Walker makes virtually no impression as Galahad, while Michael Urie as the reluctant crusader Sir Robin and Taran Killam as Lancelot and the lead Knight of Ni seem ill at ease with the veddy British, Pythonian approach to comedy. They each flash moments of hilarity, from Urie’s second-act showstopper “You Won’t Succeed on Broadway” to Killam’s ad-libbed raspberries as a snooty Frenchman who farts in the general direction of Arthur’s crusaders. But the casualness of the Python approach to comedy seems to elude them: The flop-sweat shows.
Still, this Spamalot offers some chuckles — both callbacks to the absurdism of the 1975 film as well as inspired nods to the new theatrical medium that lends a narrative structure that the movie utterly lacks. (The show stands out for Broadway-skewering numbers like “The Song That Goes Like This” that send up the genre even as they honor it.) And Eric Idle’s script has been updated with up-to-the minute references to TikTok, Ozempic, Travis Kelce and even George Santos that help to balance some of the more groan-inducing chestnuts. (Even the musical-theater references lean toward old standbys like Les Miserables, Fiddler on the Roof and Man of LaMancha that feel rather musty in 2023.)While the original Broadway production felt inspired, a burst of fresh musical-comedy air that both traded on nostalgia while offering something new, this revival too often feels like it’s going through the motions. Knights lose limbs, cows fall from the ramparts and our heroes eventually find their Grail. That’s just what happens, I guess, because this is the show that goes like this.
My full review appears in the February/March 2024 issue of U.K.-based Musicals magazine.
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