May 15 2009
‘Spamalot’ finally comes to S.F.
Even for the most devoted acolytes of Monty Python, the polymorphous British comedy troupe that flourished on television, in movies and on records in the 1970s and early ’80s, the 1975 film “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” is a near-sacred relic. That inspired send-up of Arthurian legend produced a series of satirical set pieces, verbal riffs, sight gags and meta-cinematic noodling, all tied to a loosely constructed plot, that quickly entered the pop cultural zeitgeist.
More than three decades later, the movie’s fans preserve chapter-and-verse memories of the heroes’ horseless, coconut-shell galloping; the shrubbery-craving Knights Who Say “Ni”; a bungled Trojan Rabbit scheme; an ailing peasant’s futile insistence that he’s not dead yet; an “invincible” Black Knight who fights on as one blood-spurting limb after another gets hacked off; the deadly, airborne Rabbit of Caerbannog; and enough pseudo-academic wordplay, literary in-jokes and anachronisms to keep a swarm of graduate film students busily occupied with citations and cross-references.
Not only do the Pythons “cherish nonsense for its own sake” in “Holy Grail,” wrote Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times, “but they also skewer stupidity, ignorance, and unquestioning acceptance of conventional pieties and wisdom.” The film remains remarkably fresh, inventive and unpredictable today.
Eric Idle, the Python actor and writer who played Sir Robin the Not-Quite-So-Brave-As-Sir-Lancelot (and assorted other roles) onscreen, knew it would be a challenge to transform the film into a stage musical, an idea he mulled for some time before undertaking it. But he didn’t understand just how formidable a challenge he faced until he moved from England to the United States in 1994.
It was only then, the 66-year-old Idle said by phone recently from Los Angeles, that he realized how “iconic” the movie was - “and not just because of its cult status on college campuses. It was a real eye-opener that ‘Grail’ cut across cultural barriers here. I had no idea so many people cared so much about it.”
However skeptical loyal “Grailians” may have been about corrupting a film they held dear, the musical “Monty Python’s Spamalot” has decisively affirmed Idle’s impulse. Successful as both a buoyant tribute to the film’s content and anarchic spirit and as an exhilarating musical comedy in its own right, the show is one of the genre’s improbable success stories of recent vintage. A winner of Broadway’s Tony award for best musical in 2005, “Spamalot” has played everywhere, from London to Las Vegas and Alaska to Australia.
The show - “lovingly ripped off from the motion picture ‘Monty Python and the Holy Grail,’ ” as its creators cheerfully advertise - opens it long overdue San Francisco run Friday at the Golden Gate Theatre, with an official opening on May 27.
Idle, the product of a “joyless” English boarding school followed by English literature studies at Cambridge, cites both the “surreal” medium of radio, “where the imagination can go anywhere,” and the high-density musical wordplay of Gilbert and Sullivan as formative influences. In 1987, Idle appeared in a production of the G-and-S operetta “The Mikado,” staged by Jonathan Miller, at the English National Opera. Idle was already enamored of Miller for his work in “Beyond the Fringe,” the celebrated 1960s satirical revue. With his freewheeling approach to “The Mikado,” the director ignited a fresh creative spark.
“The first thing he did,” Idle recalled of Miller’s production, “was get rid of what he called ‘all that Japanese nonsense.’ He set the whole show as a black-and-white Marx Brothers film.” As KoKo, a character empowered to mint topical new lyrics in his “Little List” song, Idle felt the full thrill of musical theater that had been simmering in him since his infatuation with “Carousel” and “Guys and Dolls.” “The fun of putting new lyrics in front of an audience was very appealing,” he said.
Idle’s first idea for an adaptation was “The Producers.” He approached Mel Brooks with the idea in 1991, nearly a full decade before the blockbuster musical version of that film reached Broadway. Idle proposed playing the stressed-out accountant, Leo Bloom, to Brooks’ own conniving producer, Max Bialystock. Miller would have directed.
By then, Idle had run up a long list of post-Python credits, from the mockumentary “All You Need Is Cash,” featuring the Beatles-parody band the Rutles, to “Transformers: The Movie” to Python crony Terry Gilliam’s “The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.” But the quest for the right musical never died. Idle ended up finding it very close to home. “Holy Grail” could work theatrically, he saw, because “it’s not about the images. It’s about character and scenes, and everything - well, almost everything - is very doable onstage.”
Idle wrote 17 drafts for “Spamalot,” five of them after the musical had gone into rehearsal in Chicago. “The first thing we had to figure out was where the intermission goes. Then how do you deal with 68 characters? And oh, yes, the movie didn’t have much of a plot, and musicals need one.” The show’s title, which derives from a near-nonsense line in the movie - “We eat ham and jam and Spam a lot” - was one thing that came easily.
Idle wrote three different endings for “Spamalot” before realizing that the grail quest had to end with the finding of the grail. That kind of plot-driven closure is fundamentally different from the movie, which trails off into a post-modern joke about the murder of a contemporary scholar. But it was also the movie’s self-consciousness about its form that gave Idle and his composer colleague, John Du Prez, the key to the musical’s own energy.
From beginning to end, “Spamalot” brims over with quotations, allusions, parodies and comic homages to other musicals. One number, a cunningly curdled “The Song That Goes Like This,” puts the lyrical battering ram to Andrew Lloyd Webber. Broadway-attuned audiences will pick up hints of “West Side Story,” “Fiddler on the Roof,” Irving Berlin, Stephen Sondheim and, fittingly enough, “The Producers,” as musicalized by Brooks, Thomas Meehan and Glen Kelly. “Spamalot” also showcases various songs from the “Grail” movie as well as Idle’s own “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life,” highjacked from the 1979 Python film “The Life of Brian.”
Du Prez, by phone from Los Angeles, said his experience as a film composer (”A Fish Called Wanda,” “The Meaning of Life”) prepared him well for his “Spamalot” assignment. “A film composer has to be a walking encyclopedia of music. The eclectic nature of ‘Spamalot’ is really about respect. It’s a very affectionate take on all those other shows and styles we reference.”
The score is also very funny on its own terms - and not just because of the whoopee-cushion effect of slide whistles and percussion blasts. “The writing of comedy music is all about pace and meter and surprise,” said Du Prez, 62. “You’re often delivering a joke, so the timing of a prolonged rest can be crucial. So are song bridges, when you might be getting back to the chorus to set up and deliver the punch line.
“Mismatch is also important,” said the former London University music lecturer, citing “I’m All Alone,” a number in which King Arthur laments his solitude on a crowded stage. The song wittily morphs from a moody aria into a kind of choral quarrel about class.
That same number eventually supplies something that wasn’t present in the “emotion-free” zone of the Pythons’ “Holy Grail” film - a romantic climax for Arthur and Lady Guinevere. “In a musical you have to care about the characters,” said Du Prez, “and there has to be an emotional journey. I’ve come to the conclusion that there are very few successful musicals that don’t involve redemption by love.” With the crucial contributions of director Mike Nichols, Idle and Du Prez fashioned a surprisingly gratifying conclusion for “Spamalot” without sacrificing its playful effervescence.
Collaborators since 1978, when they worked together on “The Life of Brian,” Idle and Du Prez have come full circle recently with a widely touring production of “Not the Messiah (He’s a Very Naughty Boy),” a musical parody of “Brian.” Idle is currently at work on a new musical, about which he would disclose neither his working partners nor the subject.
“Ah, but I can’t tell you that, now, can I?” he said. “That would ruin the surprise.” {sbox}
“Monty Python’s Spamalot”: Previews Fri.-May 26, opens May 27 and plays through July 5. Golden Gate Theatre, 1 Taylor St., San Francisco. $30-$99. Call (415) 512-7770, www.shnsf.com .
