“Have a drink and a pee, we’ll be back for act threeeeeee!  “
Uh, two sir. 
“Two!!!!!”

It was with this line that Tim Curry and the rest of the cast closed Act I of Spamalot, leaving the entire audience in hysterics. For a Python fan, seeing Spamalot was an experience that they could only have dreamed of.  But then again, who could have ever imagined that the cult classic of Monty Python and the Holy Grail could have ever become a Broadway musical, let alone one with an all-star cast and 14 Tony award nominations?

How did Spamalot come to be?  Although a Broadway musical and Monty Python may seem worlds apart, Eric Idle has managed to mesh the two seamlessly.  The humor, the intellect, and the overall ridiculousness is classic Python.

In 1969, Monty Python’s Flying Circus debuted in England on BBC. The sketch comedy show featured five British comedians and one American (who primarily provided illustrations) who were all university educated and had all decided that a career in comedy was of more interest than that of a professional academic.  Unfortunately, the show suffered from poor scheduling; it was shifted around in a late-night timetable, rarely appearing at the same weekly time. However, it quickly developed a cult following, prompting to BBC to commision a second of four eventual seasons.

The cast also recorded albums, made live appearances, and even feature-films. And Now For Something Completely Different was released in 1971, with the hope that it would introduce the genius of Monty Python to America and make a lot of money. It managed neither, and was nothing more than a rehashing of some of the more memorable Flying Circus sketches. They lacked creative control and the film bombed. But a few years later, they tried it again with greater success.

Between the filming of the third and fourth seasons, Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michael Palin, and Terry Gilliam filmed Monty Python and the Holy Grail in Scotland.  The film cost an estimated £229,575 to make, an amount so low it is practically unheard of in the film world. Fortunately Holy Grail came just as Monty Python was gaining some popularity in the United States, and therefore the film proved to be a moderate hit.  The Pythons traveled to America, where they heavily promoted the film with interviews and live appearances.

As the title suggests, Monty Python and the Holy Grail stars the Monty Python cast as King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table on their quest for the Holy Grail.  Budget limitations led to some of the film's brightest comedic gems.  Since horses could not be afforded, the knights in the film had servants who created the sound of trotting horses while a solider in the film coyly tells Arthur, “You've got two empty halves of coconut and you're bangin' 'em together.”  And like the classic Flying Circus sketches, the film contained some amusing songs, such as “Knights of the Round Table” and “The Ballad of Sir Robin,” both composed with the assistance of Neil Innes, a Python collaborator who Eric Idle would later cast as Ron Nasty in The Rutles.

Thirty years later, Broadway’s biggest hit is Spamalot, a musical co-written by Eric Idle and John Du Prez, and directed by Mike Nichols (The Graduate) that is based on Monty Python and the Holy Grail.  The show, which stars Tim Curry (Rocky Horror Picture Show), David Hyde Pierce (Frasier), and Hank Azaria (The Simpsons) is nominated for fourteen Tony awards.  To put it in perspective, that’s only one less than 2001’s smash hit The Producers.

Having been lucky enough to see Spamalot recently at New York’s Shubert Theater, I can tell you first hand that it is unlike any musical I have ever seen.  It hasn’t achieved Broadway success by becoming an Americanized and dumbed-down version of Holy Grail.  Instead, it remains very true to the Python humor, with a little bit of Rutles, Simpsons, and musical mockery thrown in for good measure.  Some of the best bits from the film are morphed into songs that are as memorable as they are hilarious.

But how did this 1975 cultish favorite become a hit musical? Although Eric Idle is clearly responsible for most of Spamalot, credit must be also given to his fellow Pythons, who created the original concept and shared Idle’s sense of humor. Whether it was their Oxbridge educations in History (Michael Palin), English (Terry Jones, Eric Idle), or even Law (John Cleese) that inspired them to tackle such historical texts as King Arthur (or the New Testament in Life of Brian for that matter), or simply a knack for absorbing more intellectual source material, the Pythons seemed well versed in practically everything they approached. 

At just under 90 minutes, Monty Python tackles a huge amount of material in Holy Grail. From the backdrop of Medieval England and the fear of the plague, the film lets us laugh at death:
“Bring out your dead!”
“I’m not dead yet!”

Also interspersed are elements of Arthurian legend, although the sober telling of the original texts is twisted into dark comedy as the black knight defiantly loses his limbs, one-by-one, in battle with Arthur, never giving up his determination – until he is left limbless on the ground, threatening to “bite your legs off”. 

And then, there are the silly bits. There are the knights who say “Ni,” the “killer bunny,” or better yet, the French military officers (“I fart in your general direction!”  “I wave my private parts at your aunties!”), not to mention the knights of the round table themselves; “The wise Sir Bedevere was the first to join King Arthur’s knights, but other illustrious names were soon to follow: Sir Lancelot the Brave, Sir Galahad the Pure, and Sir Robin the not-quite-so-brave-as-Sir-Lancelot, who had nearly fought the Dragon of Angnor, who had nearly stood up to the vicious Chicken of Bristol, and who had personally wet himself at the Battle of Badon Hill… and the aptly named Sir Not-appearing-in-this-film.”

The humor in Monty Python and the Holy Grail is episodic, and that’s what makes it work.  The plot (as it was with most Python television and film) tended to be all over the place, but it didn’t really matter; the audience was entertained, and new generations would continue to discover Holy Grail in the years ahead.  And rightfully so, as its humor has inspired everything from South Park and The Simpsons to a whole new wave of British comedians like Eddie Izzard.

Since Graham Chapman’s death in 1989, the Pythons have mostly stuck to their own projects.  Michael Palin has starred in a number of travel documentaries for the BBC, Terry Jones occasionally writes columns for the British newspaper The Guardian, John Cleese has appeared in scores of television shows (Third Rock From The Sun) and films (the recent James Bond features), and Terry Gilliam has directed feature films (Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas, The Fisher King).  Eric Idle, on the other hand, has done just about everything from headlining tours (2000’s Eric Idle Exploits Monty Python and 2003’s The Greedy Bastard Tour) to writing children’s books (The Quite Remarkable Adventures of the Owl and the Pussycat) to directing and starring in feature films (The Rutles, Nuns On The Run).  Some might say that Spamalot is his biggest undertaking yet; others will remark that he has been a genius all along. Either way, what he has crafted is a massive hit, and something that should be celebrated.

To help compose the music for Spamalot (after all, it is a musical), Eric Idle enlisted John Du Prez, a composer who actually made his entrance into the film world by scoring the music for Monty Python’s Life of Brian in 1978.  Since then he has been involved with other Python and Python-related projects such as The Meaning Of Life, A Fish Called Wanda, and some of Monty Python’s album releases, such as The Contractual Obligation Album and Monty Python at the Hollywood Bowl.  Topping that off with a role as musical director on Eric Idle’s two recent headlining tours, who else but Du Prez could possibly put Idle’s distinctive brand of wit and silliness to music?

Of course, some could have argued that the Monty Python brand of humor wouldn’t work on Broadway – that it would have to be Americanized.  Eric Idle, it seems, has more faith in his audience.  In a Newsweek interview with Devin Gordon, he said, “Americans have loved Python for many years. We used to believe it would never fly in America. That was our snobbery. "Oh, they'll never get this. We're too smart." [Laughs] It wasn't true at all.”  Not only did the British humor fly; the audience lit up when lines from Holy Grail were recited word-for-word by actors who clearly felt born to play these roles.  Says Idle, “I think it's akin to doing a Beatles song. There's something very pleasant about the familiar. What's interesting is that we accept that emotion with songs, but the first time I toured, we got that with Python sketches. I think that's kind of new.”

The show has also attracted a much different audience than the typical Broadway musical.  Suddenly, young men are excitedly lining up to see Spamalot.  While picking up the tickets at the Shubert Theater box office, I met a man who had already seen the show once on his own and was hoping to see it again with his family.

Could Spamalot be the beginning of a Broadway revolution, where sappy traditional musicals are paved aside for shows like this?  Says Idle, “… the time is right for it. We've gotten past "Phantom," the heavy musicals, the dramatic musicals, the visual musicals, and now it's time for comedy.”  I hope he’s right, because for the classic that Monty Python and the Holy Grail is, Spamalot is its perfect musical counterpart, with great performances, music, and most importantly, humor.

Spamalot is sold out through most of the summer, but if you’re interested in trying to order tickets, check out www.montypythonsspamalot.com/