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| Good knight: 'Spamalot’ has lots of hammy fun in Vegas | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| By Mark Moorhead, Special to Get Out | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| April 8, 2007 | ||||||||||||||||||||||
Happily, Idle was too smart to fall into that trap. The show, which has been a Broadway hit for two years, and which opened last weekend at Wynn Las Vegas, isn’t just for fans. This is a glorious, preposterous reinvention of the material as mainstream entertainment. It’s Python you can take your mother-in-law to; Python that can be enjoyed even by those benighted souls who “don’t get” Python. This is because “Spamalot's” connection to “Holy Grail” is, in a sense, only a pretext. The real business of the show is to skewer the conventions of Broadway kitsch. Though it takes even less of an interest in plot than the film, “Spamalot” still follows the exploits of King Arthur, played at Wynn by John O’Hurley (J. Peterman of “Seinfeld” fame), as he gathers knights for the Round Table, then receives a testy command from God (the voice of John Cleese) to seek the Holy Grail. So we still get the coconuts, the anarcho-syndicalist peasants, the taunting French guard, the knights who say “Ni,” Prince Herbert, the Trojan rabbit, the killer rabbit, Tim the Enchanter, and many other — though by no means all — of the movie’s top hits. But each of these elements is spun by Idle, co-composer John Du Prez and director Mike Nichols into a gleeful harpooning of some overproduced, overwrought or overfamiliar Broadway targets. “The Phantom of the Opera” probably gets it hardest, but “Les Miz,” “Man of La Mancha,” “La Cage,” “Fiddler,” “West Side Story” and, obviously, “Camelot” get sidelong shots. The staging is a lavish mix of high and low tech, with the extravagant low-tech effects winning the audience’s greatest enthusiasm even when, as in the Black Knight scene, they’re a bit labored. As for the Wynn production, the Broadway version has clearly been abridged and reshaped for a new town. Starting with the inevitable “What happens at Camelot, stays at Camelot,” lots of Vegas gags and even some set and dance elements seem to have been added for this venue. But in an unpretentious, free-form concept like this, it works fine. The show is well served by O’Hurley, with his silly, likable dignity and his pleasant singing. The standout in the cast is the stunning Nikki Crawford as the Lady of the Lake. When she thunders out the mock-inspirational anthem “Find Your Grail,” you may find yourself misting up in spite of the joke. She and Idle demonstrate Noel Coward’s observation on how potent cheap music can be, even when the music itself is telling you that it’s cheap. Get Spammed Tickets for “Monty Python’s Spamalot” are $49 to $99. Info: (888) 320-7110 or Wynnlasvegas.com Contact Mark Moorhead by email, or phone () - |
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