Its jokes may date back to 1975, gulp, but “Spamalot” is not dead yet.
In fact, I keep a little list of touring shows where the touring cast is better than the Broadway original, and the crew that currently is clicking coconuts and farting in the audience’s general direction at Chicago’s CIBC Theatre now has a distinguished place on that document.
Let me be clear about the list I am talking about. Chicago has a long history with this show, the musical based on “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” that had its pre-Broadway tryout here in 2004, replete with David Hyde Pierce, Hank Azaria, Tim Curry, the hoo-larious Sara Ramirez, Michael McGrath and Christopher Sieber, and with no less than Mike Nichols in the director’s chair. I recall it with enormous fondness. I went back several times; at one memorable performance, I even watched Eric Idle, the show’s creator, get locked out of the theater and have to convince a Broadway in Chicago guard, who must have been half-French, that he belonged. Funny as all get out and one for the memoir.
After we Chicagoans whipped the show into shape, we then got the national tour at least twice.
What has arrived at the CIBC Theatre this week is not another incarnation of that, though, but the national tour of the 2023 Broadway revival, which flopped in New York, and for good reason. The production values were cheesy, and not in a Monty Python way but in the cheap way; the dismal decision was made to use low-quality video to update what always was an analog satire, and the director, Josh Rhodes, failed to trust the material at key junctures, adding all kinds of shtick that mostly served to get in the way of the hilarious lyrics written by Idle and the music by Idle and the brilliant John DuPrez. Broadway internet sages argued at the time that the show was dated. Claptrap. This is knockout material that reminds you of the lack of courage of most of the Broadway satires that have followed. The revival was just misdirected.
I’m still not in love with this new take — still cheesy, still too much clutter — but this touring cast is far better than the revival’s originals and I’d say that the direction has greatly improved, too; perhaps it’s the work of Derek Kolluri, the associate. Or maybe Rhodes just figured out better where he had gone wrong and found the right people this time.
Either way, the casting is knockout: Major Attaway makes a fabulous King Arthur, Blake Segal kills as Patsy, Amanda Robles is an entertaining Lady of the Lake (despite all the stuff in the way of her lyrics) and I was ticked pink all night by Leo Roberts as Sir Galahad and various other pompous figures. Steve Telsey has more roles than John Cleese has malapropisms and he’s a blast in all of them. There have to be a lot of voice-over specialists in this crew; that’s what is needed since Python is all about verbal dexterity.
There are very few musicals, thus very few gigs, on Broadway this season and I’d say the road, or at least this production, is a major beneficiary. Whopping union talent can be found at the CIBC this week and they’ll give you a good time or bust a collective gut trying.
I got a kick Wednesday night watching the many people who clearly had brought their Gen Z offspring, trying to share their love of Monty Python with a generation now so removed, and with such a different value system, frankly, that it was quite the challenge. All around me, though, I could see kids won over in Act 2 by these fine performers, deliciously outraged at the politically incorrect jokes and all the comedic daring, wrapped of course in a great shared love of both Python and Broadway musical comedy. I skipped my way out of the theater, feeling better about the world.
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic
cjones5@chicagotribune.com
Review: “Spamalot” (3 stars)
When: Through May 31
Where: CIBC Theatre, 18 W. Monroe St.
Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes
Tickets: $35-$135 at 312-977-1700 and broadwayinchicago.com
