To the clack of coconuts, 'Spamalot' hits West End
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Your support makes all the difference.The serfs were stopping passers-by to demand matches to set fire to the witch. "I'm not really a witch," the woman with a crooked false nose said plaintively.
Knights on imaginary horses cantered past to the accompaniment of clacking coconuts as the ticket queue around the Palace Theatre in central London, grew ever longer. And just in case anyone in the queue was missing the point, monks in hooded robes held giant signs with equally gigantic arrows. "Grail sale," they said.
The musical Spamalot, "lovingly ripped off" from the 1975 film Monty Python and the Holy Grail, was open for business. The brainchild of the former Python star Eric Idle, the $13m (£7.5m) show has already taken Broadway by storm and will do so here this autumn judging by the queues waiting for the first tickets to go on sale yesterday.
Idle, 62, said the show's success on home turf mattered to him, even though he has lived in America with his second wife and their daughter for years. "In America it was 'oh gosh, I hope it works.' Here it's kind of important it works," he said.
"It's a fun show that I think the Brits will enjoy. There's not a lot like this on, where you can go just thinking, 'I've had such a bad day, bad week, I'm going to sit there and have a good laugh.'"
The musical, which includes the song "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life", will open in October starring Tim Curry, an original cast member, in the role of King Arthur. He will be succeeded in January by Simon Russell Beale, who is currently in the show in New York. Mike Nichols, the director of films including The Graduate and Catch-22, will direct the London version as he did the original which won three Tonies, Broadway's highest honours, and a Grammy award for the music. A regional tour starts next month and has already sold out in Boston and Chicago.
Securing the support of the surviving Pythons was vital. So Idle with the composer John Du Prez wrote a complete script to present to them. A song called "The Song That Goes Like This" "cracked them up" and they were on board.
Asked about the row over religious offence in which the Pythons were embroiled after Life of Brian, he said: "Comedy's role is to challenge people's thinking. It's the ability to say things that are unthinkable that gives comedians their only validity. I don't think you can get laughs out of untruths though you can get laughs out of unkindness. That's where I do make some distinction. You mustn't be cruel to people or pick on people."
Or not on most people. Andrew Lloyd Webber is an exception. He may own the Palace Theatre but Spamalot's jokes about him are staying in.
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