04.11.05 - 10:15 p.m.

And now, for a decidedly un-Timesian review of Spamalot, as seen by Casey and Dan last Wednesday night:

It was a His Dude play!

No, really, it was. The killer rabbit was played by a stuffed animal, who attacked the knights by being thrown at them by a puppeteer -- much in the style of the killer cat in our play about Anne Frank, who attacked the members of her family by being thrown at them. (It's a long and historically inaccurate story.) The songs created for the musical were parodies of other musicals -- much in the style of our "Oklahomeless" and "Annie" rewrites. It makes me wonder why we never made it big with our fake singing/dancing/acting troupe, but maybe the fact that most of our parodies had even LESS of a cohesive plot than Spamalot does had something to do with it.

That said, I don't think Spamalot makes any sense as a stand-alone musical. Can you enjoy the sight of Hank Azaria playing the lead Knight of Ni without knowing the scene in the movie, and loving the movie for all its non-sequitur-ness? Yes, it's funny -- that's why Monty Python and the Holy Grail is a cult classic in the first place -- but is it funny to a new audience? I would love to see the audience breakdown between Python fans and those who came from word of mouth.

As a Python fan, I was underwhelmed by the humor in the new songs, and the somewhat obvious jabs they took at Broadway. But also as a Python fan, I was happy to see the throwaway gags and in-jokes (wink wink, nudge nudges) to other Python skits. And as a Tim Curry fan, I'm happy to see him in ANYTHING -- even if he's lost the dancing skills that made him the one and only Rooster and Dr. Frankenfurter, he still sounds the same.

And everyone performs with the biggest smiles on their face. They're fans, too -- you can see that Hank is having the GREATEST time being up there, saying the classic lines, dancing like a goofy spaz. Probably the best thing Spamalot has going for it is its infectious humor. Even if it makes no sense, others are laughing, the actors are laughing, and eventually those who are new to the cult will be laughing too.