Today I went to see the musical Spamalot. That may be the sort of way that a primary school child starts their school camp diary (assuming part of said school camp involved going to see Spamalot, which would immediately make it much better than my school camp) but at least it’s factually accurate — today I did indeed go and see Spamalot.
Spamalot is, of course, the musical based loosely on Monty Python and the Holy Grail, one of the most irritatingly-oft-quoted movies of all time. The show plays up on this by incorporating a number of the movie’s most memorable quotes whilst wrapping it in an all new crispy coating of musical theatre.
The production we saw today featured Phill Jupitus as King Arthur. I’ve not seen him on stage before but I’ve always been a fan of him on shows such as Never Mind the Buzzcocks, and his likeable persona brought a lot to the character of Arthur — particularly as there was a bit of inadvertent corpsing on several occasions, evidence that the show is likely coming towards the end of its run.
The show itself is great. My lovely ladyfriend introduced me to the soundtrack a few weeks back and I found myself returning to it on Spotify regularly, so we decided to check it out. The stage show in the UK is somewhat different from the US-centric soundtrack — the song about never succeeding on Broadway if you don’t have any Jews is conspicuously absent, replaced by the not-so-subtle “you’ll never succeed in showbiz if you don’t have any stars”.
The cast were good and played their parts with appropriate levels of aplomb. And, in the tradition of all good tongue-in-cheek musicals, the show succeeds because it’s not only an excellent spoof of the musical genre in general, it’s also a good musical, with some excellently memorable tunes, good pacing and a suitably huge-sounding finale.
So, basically, if you get the opportunity to go and see Spamalot, then you should. It’s rather good.
Discover more from I'm Not Doctor Who
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
