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| For one brief, hilarious moment, there was a play called 'Spamalot.' News-Progress photos by Keith Stewart |
There comes a
song like this
It starts off
soft and low
And ends up
with a kiss
Oh where is the
song
That goes like
this?
Where is it?
Where? Where?
A sentimental
song
That casts a
magic spell
They all will
hum along —
We’ll overact
like hell —
For this is the
song that goes like this
Yes it is! Yes
it is!
— “The Song That Goes Like This” from “Spamalot”
By Dan Hagen
It’s the rare
musical comedy that can take you from farce to a treatise on political
organization with the speed of a galloping coconut. And this is the show that
goes like that.
We can thank
“Spamalot” — and “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” the movie that inspired it
— for opening our eyes to the fact that getting handed a fancy-ass sword from some
soggy woman may not be a sound basis for a responsible system of government.
“Oh, but you
can’t expect to wield supreme executive power just because some watery tart
threw a sword at you,” explains the constitutionally progressive peasant Dennis
Galahad (Sean Zimmerman) to King Arthur (Robert Anthony Jones). “Oh, but if I
went ‘round sayin' I was emperor just because some moistened bint lobbed a
scimitar at me, they’d put me away.”
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| Shook high in background; Jones in foreground |
Thus, when
knights mime riding horses to the clip-clop of coconuts, the quest gets
interrupted while bystanders muse just how a Cocos nucifera fruit from a
tropical palm tree managed to turn up in Dark Ages England. Did an overburdened
swallow drop it off?
This sort of stuff
is as smart as it is silly. It’s a rare show that can make comic fodder out of
migratory patterns and lift-to-drag ratios, you know.
And this show
is all lift, no drag (well, a little zaftig drag by funnyman John McAvaney).
The proceedings swirl in the kind of meta-show humor that could easily go bad
in the wrong hands, but is delicious here.
The performers
constantly cut away the supports for our suspension of disbelief and let it do
a pratfall, reminding us that they’re actors in a show and we’re an audience in
on the joke. That stuff reaches a crescendo in “The Song That Goes Like This,”
a generic-aisle parody of every soaring, pompous declaration of love you’ve
heard in a musical. Funny how potent cheap music can be.
Potent, too, is
the colorful set by Jennifer Price-Fick and the especially colorful costumes by
Timmy Valentine. Actors shed their armor to don disco garb and white tie and
tails and who knows what all. We get tap dancing and scat singing. The pace is
frenetic and the fun is eclectic.
“Spamalot” ultimately succeeds because
it’s in the hands of assured professional performers who are in command of
comic material they know to be first-rate. The air of confidence that generates
is irresistible. Those performers include:
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| Jared Titus as Sir Robin |
• Zimmerman as
Galahad, tossing his head fetchingly in that long, blond wig. Shows you the
mileage a talented actor can get out of a single prop. And his deadpan
dismembered Black Knight is priceless.
• Karla Shook
as the moistened bint herself, the Lady of the Lake. As one might expect, a
supernatural siren who can crown kings and breathe underwater is a bit of a
diva, and Shook lets us have that full force in “The Diva’s Lament.”
Her swift,
knowing looks are priceless. “That’s awfully high for me,” Zimmerman sings uncertainly
in their duet. “But as everyone can see, we should have stayed in D,” Shook
replies, scowling pointedly into the orchestra pit.
• Marc Pera as
Patsy, the Baldric of the piece (remember Blackadder?). Pera underplays
masterfully, particularly when Jones moans the song “I’m All Alone” while his
unappreciated sidekick is clearly right there beside him. Pera flavors the
number with just the right air of resigned exasperation.
• Jones as
Arthur. He was a comic tornado as Pseudolous in “Forum,” but here it’s his
bombastic chin-up nobility that carries the day. He’s like Richard Burton doing
Shakespeare on a nonexistent horse. Jones knows the secret — that the more
seriously you can appear to take the silliest of proceedings, the funnier they
are for everybody
• Matthew Alan
Schmidt as Lancelot, a medieval brute with a soft center best revealed under
disco lights. Good as he is in that role, Schmidt really rakes in the laughs in
the other parts he plays, including a surly French gatekeeper and a gigantic
Knight Who Says Ni. As with Jones, it’s Schmidt’s flat, absolutely convinced
delivery that does the trick.
• Perhaps best
of all, although it’s a tricky call, is Trey Compton. He portrays the plummy
BBC-ish Historian who sets up the show as well as Herbert, a winsome prince who
longs for a handsome knight to rescue him from home. Compton tackles this role
in so determinedly gentle and sunny a fashion that he pulls every eye toward
him.
Repeat viewings
of this production would slide down easily. The show’s delightful and just
about as durable as the 700-year-old legends that inspired it.
Incidental Intelligence: Python Eric Idle
wrote the show's book and lyrics and collaborated with John Du Prez on the
music, although “Knights of the Round Table” and “Brave Sir Robin” were
composed by Neil Innes for the 1975 film. “Always Look on the Bright Side of
Life” was written by Idle for the film “Monty Python's Life of Brian.”
The cast includes Kelsey Andres, Rachel
Perin, Melissa Jones, Amanda Johns, Mandy Modic, Colin Shea Denniston, Andy
Frank, Matthew Glover AND Peter Marinaro.
The show has lighting design by Matthew
Frick, stage management by Jeremy J. Phillips, fight coordination by Compton
and musical direction by Kevin Long. Andres is dance captain.
Performances will run through Aug. 11.
Tickets may be purchased by calling The Little Theatre on the Square Box Office
at (217)-728-7375 or online at www .thelittletheatre.org.
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| When a wrong turn takes the show in Finland, we get the Fisch Schlapping Song, with Pera in the middle |
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