Knights of the round table (Camelot Song)

As a teenager in the 70's Monty Python was part of my formative years and the ability to be able to recite various sketches verbatim was essential to be considered "cool" in the playground or at BB. (I was in the Boys Brigade and Python featured heavily!)

It has been a particular joy to me that the humour has transferred a generation and that my two sons enjoy the same sketches now as I did at their age. Matthew used his first Python quote whilst I took him into hospital to meet his new brother for the first time!

The Pythons are probably best known for two films they made "Holy Grail" and "Life of Brian" the latter being regularly quoted in "top ten all time favourite film" lists.

"Holy Grail" was the Python's take on medieval Britain and the King Arthur legend. While the TV series had been a great success, transferring the Python humour to film was a whole new concept and in their autobiography "The Pythons" it is clear that they were unsure for long periods of time over whether it was funny enough. They changed much of it and dropped some things and the end product is nigh on perfect. It's worth remembering that all of them had to mortgage their houses to produce it and had outside funding which included members of both Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd.

In 2004, one of the Python's Eric Idle, having toured America with a show called "The Greedy Bastard" tour decided his next cashing in ploy would be to put together a musical based on "Holy Grail". "Spamalot" was born!

It opened in New York and quickly transferred to Broadway starring Tim Curry and David Hyde-Pierce (Niles off of Frasier). It won a Tony in 2005 and is now running on Broadway, in London, in Las Vegas and on tour in the USA.

On Monday night the boys and I went to the Palace Theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue and saw the UK show.

It was great! A lot more musical than I had expected (duh!) with lots of full on song and dance routines. They were faithful to the film however with the majority of the plot and script being used. In addition they included references to classic Python sketches (beautiful plumage) and they also managed to sing "Always look on the bright side of life" twice!!

I was really impressed with the "Black knight" scene in which they managed to chop off both arms and both his legs live onstage! The only major omissions were the "She's a witch" & "Spanking" scenes, but they weren't really missed. Some of the well known songs (E.G.Knights of the Round Table) were performed as per the film and then extended into full blown Broadway productions. Additional songs were written including "Not dead yet" which took the basis of the "Bring out your dead" sketch and again turned it into a full on song and dance routine. There is also a whole theme running through the show, which takes the mick out of musicals, it starts with new song called "The song that goes like this". This is a big ballad which basically says that in every show at this point there is a big ballad!

The set was excellent and included projection so that many of the animations could be incorporated into the plot. The acting was very good and Sanjeev Bhaskar as King Arthur managed to "ad-lib" some of the Kumars humour in as well! The language was fine with one or two minor swear words but nothing to really offend.

We were sat in the Upper Circle so our view was not the best but the show is designed so that all can see what's going on and apart from the man in the row in front who needed a good haircut we could most of what was going on.

Would I recommend it...yes. Would I go again... yes.

Rumour has it Eric Idle is working on the follow up "He's not the Messiah"