Spamalot, the play "lovingly ripped-off" from the movie of Monty Python & The Holy Grail.

This musical is just very silly. It keeps the spirit of the Pythons while making fun of the Broadway genre, of course. It is created & written by Eric Idle with the blessing of the rest of the Pythons and directed by Mike Nichols. John Cleese is the voice of God and Michael Palin created the Finnish parody program.

The first act starts off kinda clunky. Dialogue is pretty much verbatim from the movie with some characters condensed to move the plot along. It's hard to tell at this point exactly how the play will progress. It's nice to see things the same, but at the same time it doesn't feel very fresh. Somewhere halfway through the second act, things start to get silly with lots of big Broadway production numbers. At intermission, you just get a feeling of how silly it is.

It's during the second act that the play really takes on a personality on its own. The general plot of Arthur & the Knights looking for the Grail is the same, but now it really starts to parody the musical genre. In their quest they have to find a Jew so that they can successfully stage a play on Broadway.

The scenes in the second act that are taken from the movie work much better here. The Kights of Ni, Prince Herbert, & the killer Rabbit scenes are just so funny. And the Dark Knight getting his limbs cut off is incredible.

I believe that the second act works better because there is a lot less of Tim Curry. I don't think that he really works as Arthur. He's a good stage actor, but he just doesn't get it. On the other hand Hank Azaria is unbelievable. What an actor, what a mimic! And David Hyde Pierce is a wonderful stage performer.

This was really very enjoyable and lots of fun. To give it a rating I would have to say 3.5 out of 5.