It could also be applicable for a musical with “spam” within the title to really feel canned. But it’s a disgrace that the primary Broadway revival of “Monty Python’s Spamalot,” now taking part in on the St. James Theatre, struggles to search out something contemporary about materials coated in a half-century of mud.
A comedy broader than a bowling alley, “Spamalot” premiered on Broadway in 2005, 30 years after the film “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” from which the creators say it’s “lovingly ripped off.” The British troupe’s devotion to wordplay, absurdity and bodily operate was classic even then. Like a pile of corpses that bursts into track, some tenants of comedy by no means die. But they do lose their vigor.
Director and choreographer Josh Rhodes’ manufacturing, which originated on the Kennedy Center this spring, is extra frenzied regurgitation than reinvention, opting at each flip for showy bells and whistles over unique interpretation. The consequence suggests insecurity about whether or not the present holds up when what we’d like is an argument that it does.
Aside from a number of well timed winks to TikTok and Ozempic, the guide and lyrics by Monty Python vet Eric Idle (who collaborated on the music with John Du Prez) leans closely on nostalgia for varied layers of IP courting all the way in which again to the fifth century. The motion is about on the heels of a plague, however any resonance with the current appears purely incidental.
A meta parody of Arthurian heroism and showbiz conventions, “Spamalot” is an accumulation of bits, propelled by giddy vibes moderately than an precise plot. It’s virtually an hour in earlier than God duties King Arthur (James Monroe Iglehart) “to set an instance to individuals in these darkish instances” by discovering the Holy Grail, or metaphorically, what fulfills his soul (or one thing?). He is, after all, joined by a band of bumbling knights, and intermittently by the Lady of the Lake (Leslie Rodriguez Kritzer), whose self-importance is stretched into a skinny, repeated punchline.
Among a powerful lineup of dependable expertise, some performers fare higher than others. Taran Killam, an “SNL” alum, is a riot, bringing vocal panache to a wide range of roles during which he’s seen solely from the neck up (his blowing of raspberries as a mustachioed Frenchman could also be the perfect line within the present). Michael Urie lends an elastic face and sing-songy intonations to Sir Robin, and Ethan Slater’s dexterous bodily humor, as a French mime, an effete prince and a unadorned puppeteer, is all the time welcome. If solely Christopher Fitzgerald had way more to do than click on collectively coconuts.
Though Arthur is the comedy’s straight man, Iglehart can seem to be he’s not in on the joke, and albeit a bit misplaced, whereas Kritzer alternately pushes too exhausting or retreats from a job that calls for overassurance. (None of the performances profit from a reminiscence of the unique manufacturing, directed by Mike Nichols, whose stars included Tim Curry, David Hyde Pierce and a breakout Sara Ramirez.)
The bodily staging is a dizzying sensory overload, to the purpose that even apparent sight gags (severed limbs, a beheaded rabbit puppet) get misplaced within the chaos. The set, which resembles a pop-up storybook on the underside and a frenetic online game overhead, feels uneasy and overdone, with gaudy animation including pointless spectacle (the scenic and projection design is by Paul Tate dePoo III). The costumes by Jen Caprio take an all-you-can-fasten strategy to accents together with fur, fringe, feathers, flowers, bells, bows and beads — typically in a single look.
The manufacturing’s overdesign is a symptom of the broader drawback, which is a scarcity of ingenuity in favor of sheer extra. It is a paradox of throwing cash onstage that it could simply come on the expense of creativity. There could also be a option to reanimate “Spamalot,” and for Monty Python’s random surrealism to contaminate a brand new era and confront the present second. But that grail is to not be discovered right here.
