Theatre Review: Spamalot

Because I am a heterosexual male, I don’t see musicals. I think it’s a genetic thing. I’ve tried – I watched some musicals on television and even sat through, completely bemused, Miss Saigon. Nothing. The only things that can affect me have humour – Blues Brothers and South Park: Bigger, Longer, Uncut are practically musicals but with comedy, and I can watch them endlessly.

If you add ‘slightly geeky’ to ‘heterosexual male’, you tend to find a Monty Python fan. It was seeing Monty Python and the Holy Grail at an early age that switched me on to Python, so I have a fondness for it.

Which brings me to Spamalot. Now, I know I’m rather late in seeing this blockbusting musical, but that doesn’t stop me from having an opinion about it that I feel forced to share with you. I had to overcome my reticence to musicals because of the curiosity of a Python fan: would Spamalot ruin the film with cheap songs?

The connection of music with Monty Python isn’t too big a stretch; Eric Idle always had wonderfully silly songs dotted throughout, so it wouldn’t take an excess of imagination to reimagine it as a musical. However, the extra ingredient that brings Spamalot to life is the exuberance of being a musical while also mocking the musical at the same time.

The Holy Grail film is suitable for turning to other forms because it doesn’t work completely as a movie – it is essentially well-connected sketches that fall apart with the ending, as if no conclusion can be really satisfying (even if the breaking of the fourth wall is amusing). This means that the sketches can be used easily in the musical. In fact, there are entire sections of sketches that are used in the show: coconuts; bring out your dead; anarcho-syndicalist commune; the knights who say Ni; the taunting Frenchmen; Tim and the rabbit; the wedding. This means that I am automatically going to enjoy myself hearing them again. But then you add the music.

And the music is fun. Lots of fun. Knights of The Roundtable, which provided the title for the show, is elaborated into a Vegas show tune, and there is even place for Bright Side of Life. But there are lots of other fun songs. This Is The Song That Goes Like This mocks Lloyd Webber tunes, and is so good they use it again. (In fact, there are so many references to other musicals that a lot were lost on me; it was only via the Spamalot Wikipedia entry that I was able to understand them all.) A Finnish Schlapping Dance starts off proceedings in an appropriately silly fashion (harking back to the joke opening credits in the film), and there is a lovely song in the second half from the Lady in the Lake singing What Happened To My Part?, complaining about the fact that the show is mostly a boys-own event and there hasn’t been much room for (absolutely amazing) singing. Even though it is a great number, the You Won’t Succeed song starts off with nobody laughing; I’ve never heard an audience that was enjoying something so much go so quiet so quickly after hearing the word 'Jews'. I’ve been reliably informed that this song is an in-joke about Broadway, which perhaps gets lost in translation. The enthusiasm of the song wins the audience over in the end, but it was dicey for a few minutes. The variety of music is wide, as there is even time for some disco as Lancelot finally comes to the realisation that he is gay.

The show comes to a finale with a wonderful breaking of the fourth wall, with a member of the audience helping the quest the Holy Grail for them, which is perfectly suited to the spirit of the film but fits in even better in a musical, after the knights have been told that that the West End is the location of the Holy Grail. The musical also channels the spirit of the film by having the performers, apart from King Arthur, playing multiple parts. The actor playing Lancelot/Tim/Taunting Frenchman is particularly impressive in this respect. The actor playing King Arthur does a good job of playing the role instead of imitating Graham Chapman, with a much dryer delivery. The actor playing the Lady of the Lake gave a wonderful performance, with an incredible singing range.

All in all, the cast were a delight and, even though I saw a matinee, they gave a rousing performance that entertained everybody in the theatre. The sense of fun that permeated the whole show was fantastic. I’ve never enjoyed myself in the theatre as much. Spamalot is not Monty Python, even though it uses the sketches from the film; it is a wonderfully silly piece of fun entertainment. (This is appropriate: after the Camelot interlude, King Arthur sums it up with, ‘On second thoughts, let’s not go to Camelot. It is a silly place.’) I enjoyed it so much that I could easily have turned up to the evening show and watched it all again. However, I’m not sure if I particularly want to see the inevitable film version – I would rather just have a filmed version of the show I saw. Thoroughly deserving of all the success it has achieved, I would heartily recommend it to anyone, even if you’re not a Monty Python fan. It doesn’t mean that I’m going to start watching more musicals, though …

Theatre review: Pinter's People

Harold Pinter is a former Nobel Laureate and revered institution of the theatre. I have never seen one of his plays. All I really know about him is from references in comedy (specifically a Stephen Fry reference to ‘Pinteresque pauses’ and the Derek and Clive sketch about two critics discussing Pinter using swearing in his plays). Therefore, the opportunity to sample his wares via a selection of sketches and monologues performed by a quartet of top comedy actors, including the wonderful Bill Bailey (discussing it with the Guardian here), seemed too good to resist.

Pinter’s People is a collection of 14 rarely seen sketches and, after watching it, I can understand why. The reviews haven’t been particularly kind, although the critics seem to hold the actors and the directors to account rather than the material. I found the opposite. If it weren’t for seasoned comedy actors wringing humour out of situations that wasn’t in the words, there would have been very little to bring merriment.

The majority of sketches seem to have an idea as the source of comedy rather than the actual sketch itself. Other sketches seem to be merely conversations that Pinter has overheard and thought were amusing and decided to write up as a black comedy sketch, but failed to show why he thought they were funny in the finished product. Two sketches brought some satisfaction. ‘That’s Your Trouble’ had some delightful bits of comedy in the interplay between Bailey and Kevin Eldon, and ‘Night’ was a wonderful scene between Bailey and Geraldine McNulty as an elderly couple trying to recall how their relationship begun, before remembering that they are still together for a reason, in a beautifully touching ending.

For some reason, the sketch ‘Victoria Station’, between Bailey as a mini cab controller and Eldon as a driver, got huge laughs, despite it being evident from early on that Eldon’s character has done something deeply unpleasant. People were still laughing at the end even when it is obvious that he has kidnapped a woman. The final sketch, ‘Last To Go’, was the very definition of the phrase ‘Pinteresque pauses’, as Bailey’s food vendor and Eldon’s newspaper seller have a ridiculously protracted conversation about nothing whatsoever. If it hadn’t been for Bailey doing his trademark facial tics in the pauses, it would have felt interminable.

Sometimes, when watching theatre, I wonder if I’m missing something because I haven’t studied drama at university to understand it. This was one of those occasions. I was glad that the reviews didn’t like the show, even though I didn’t want it to be bad, but it at least confirmed that I am not a complete idiot. This episode also suggested that I should avoid Pinter plays in the future, no matter how highly esteemed his work is held.

Clandestine Critic - A Life?

Have I been doing anything, then?

Well, I went to the theatre and saw Patrick Stewart and Joshua Jackson in David Mamet's A Life In The Theatre. Stewart was great, and Jackson kept his own, even though he was mostly reacting to Stewart, as two actors in the theatre and their lives. It is odd but I felt that we didn't really get to know the full story, not helped by the amount of changes in scene, going from one to the next, sometimes after a few lines, even if the dialogue was always interesting.

It was unlike other shows I've seen, where you get to feel as if you are witnessing significant parts of peoples' lives, but similar to another Mamet play I saw on the stage, Sexual Perversity In Chicago, with Matthew Perry, Hank Azaria, Minnie Driver and Kelly Reilly (who acted all the former off the stage, it has to be said). The rapid scenes and the change to others seemed disorienting and random, giving an almost strobe-like quality to the lives witnessed. I confess that I might not be sufficiently well-versed in the intricacies of theatre, but it was slightly disconcerting and made me wonder if Mamet plays are all like this and if I've been dazzled by all the good films I've watched that he's written.

I've also watched an Ashton Kutcher film, Dude, Where's My Car? and still feel slightly dirty and soiled. How did that film get made? Why were Brent Spiner and Andy Dick in it? The only worthwhile aspect was learning that 'Sugayna!' (or equivalent spelling) is the Japanese for 'Sweet!', which is hardly a ringing endorsement of a film. Why did I watch it, I hear you ask? Because I'm a weird cinematic masochist with a taste for watching absolute dreck even when there are more important things to do in the world, like getting a life.

I read at The Beat [EDIT: link no longer available] that Matthew Vaughan is going to direct X-Men 3 and am still stumped by that one. I'll have to get Layer Cake out on DVD and find out what to expect. And I was only watching X2 on the weekend as well, wondering when the third film was going to move ahead …

Finally, I thought I should mention that a new block of flats is being built near where I live, called Lingham Court, which I find very amusing, as Lingham is a Sanskrit word for phallus.