I have to push the pram a lot....

I seem to be going to a succession of shows these days. After returning from Seattle and seeing Rent with Anthony Rapp and Adam Pascal (again, whoo!), I went to see Spamalot just a couple days later in SF.

I've seen Spamalot once before, on Broadway, with Harry Groener in the role of King Arthur. To my surprise, I didn't particularly enjoy it. I think I must have been in a bad mood, and was really bothered by feeling like I was left out of the joke. The audience kept laughing, which is great and fine, except they kept laughing when I didn't see anything funny going on - or anything in particular going on. It's not just that I didn't "get" the joke, I didn't even notice anything resembling a joke was happening. Feeling like I'm left out of the joke hundreds of people are getting does not put me in a good mood.

This time, I was determined to arm myself before going by watching Monty Python and the Holy Grail first. I'd forgotten how the first 1/2 hour of that movie is essentially a series of sketches, with King Arthur passing through all of them. It's also where many of the famous jokes (or at least the ones repeated a lot at CTY) take place, with the "I'm not dead yet", airspeed velocity of a swallow, "she's a witch! a witch!", "it's just a flesh wound", etc all taking place in rapid succession. I also realized I didn't forget as many of the jokes as I thought, though I'd completely forgotten about the Finish subtitles in the credits, the fake movie start, and some of the details of the "we're the knights of the round table" random musical number at Camelot.

I settled into watching Spamalot Wednesday night at the Orpheum, and discovered to my delight, that I was enjoying the show considerably more than the last time. You'd think re-hearing the exact same jokes twice within a week, told almost exactly the same way, would lessen my enjoyment of them, but I think the recognition from the movie helps. You're laughing with fond familiarity, on top of enjoying just amusing humor. Though my sister hasn't watched Holy Grail since high school and still really enjoyed the show. I still wonder about combining the random "Dennis" guy railing against authority with Galahad, or the guy who conks out the "I'm not dead yet" old man with Lancelot, though at least in the latter case, it almost makes sense given Lancelot's later random acts of senseless violence. They completely diminished Sir Belvedere's role (dropping the witch scene, which I thought was classic in the movie) while keeping large roles for characters like Lancelot, whose actor played multiple roles in the show (periodically we'd look around and be like, where'd Lancelot go? Oh the actor is playing the French taunter). Still, as long as you're not expecting a completely faithful adaptation of the movie, it's fun to see how they've adapted the movie to a show. Especially given that the show is much longer than the movie was. There are several fun numbers basically making fun of the whole musical theater format. I thought John O'Hurley made an excellent King Arthur, combining that just right degree of dignity and royalty with absurdity. The rest of the cast were also stellar. The Lady of the Lake was a great comic actress, overplaying her part to great effect, and much hilarity. Lancelot threw himself into his role(s) with glee - not the best French accent but a really funny physical interpretation of the taunting. Sir Robin, Galahad, Arthur's faithful companion whose name I've forgotten...all excellently played. It was definitely an enjoyable evening out. Though I do have to wonder how some of the jokes play with those who have never seen the movie. They should be funny even if this is the first time you've seen it, but you might wonder why the audience is laughing *quite* that hard. On the other hand, the audience seemed less composed of insiders this time around - while they were clearly enjoying the show, people laughed when I did and didn't laugh when I didn't, and it felt like a better communal experience all around.