John O'Hurley Always
'Looks On The Bright Side Of Life'
John O'Hurley makes me smile…I don't know why, he just does. He must have one of those faces. Or he has an inner brightness. Whatever it is, O'Hurley uses it liberally in his role as Arthur in the Las Vegas version of Spamalot. He is the centerpiece of a sterling cast, all of them talented, quick to mug, their delivery witty, timing perfect. You will laugh, even if you are completely unfamiliar with the whole 'Monty Python reality.'
The Wynn Las Vegas replaced Avenue Q with Spamalot. Although I was sorry to see Avenue Q go, as it was excellent, getting another Broadway hit in exchange, also a musical, left me with mixed feelings. I relented recently and saw Spamalot—mostly to see John O'Hurley, and incidentally, to see if the show is as good as I'd heard. It is.
British high humor of the '60s and '70s for The Pythons, (five guys devoted to the absurd) was not high brow, and yet taking the low road doesn't describe it either. They invented their own genre of British humor, skewed to silliness and nonsense, coyly lampooning people, language and ideas.
The show's energetic Python, Eric Idle 'lovingly ripped off' their work, mostly of their movie, Monty Python and the Holy Grail. With permission from the other four, he spoofs their own spoofing of Camelot with insinuations and innuendos aimed at Vegas. This show about the 'town that never sleeps—Camelot' is a perfect match for Vegas, with its gambling humor and showgirl costuming. Idle rendered a very loving musical form of Monty Python…it is a crash course in nearly all things Python.
Spamalot is not in the typical sense, a Broadway play, if that even needs saying. There is no intermission. Idle refers to Acts, though you will be hard pressed to delineate them. The show is a musical, about 90 minutes in length. The sets, such as the 'dark and very expensive forest' are mint. The elaborately colorful Camelot castle, the fairytale ending, the prominently displayed roulette wheel in the sky combine into a bizarre marriage of Broadway and Vegas.
In a town of Cirques, this throw-up to the original Flying Circus crowd indeed has no circus acts. A cow hurtles through the air, Killer Rabbits are on the loose, coconuts amplify the equestrian Arthur's forward movements and an evil Knight asks to continue a fight after he has lost, one after the other, his legs and arms. No circus acts. That said, everyone loved it the night we were there, giving a vigorous standing ovation at the end.
The Wynn Las Vegas has a winner with this show and cast. The Knights of Ni: "One for all, some for some and none for none" were all brilliant, especially the versatile Steven Strafford, who has enough breadth to open as the Historian, move on to Not Dead Fred, join the French Guard, and continue as a Minstrel and finally, Prince Herbert. King Arthur: John O'Hurley is obviously enjoying himself immensely. The Lady of The Lake: Nikki Crawford, a true Diva, larked through her lines, rocked the house with her vocals, uber-vamping 'The Song That Goes Like This,' though I especially liked her '…what about me?…' King Arthur's Faithful Servant, Patsy: Justin Brill romps through every scene. The Laker Girls: one and all, talented and gorgeous.
John O'Hurley is the quintessential Vegas Arthur. He is reserved, dignified, polished—the new Vegas guy. He demonstrated he could discipline himself, lose weight and learn intricate dance routines when he appeared on the first season of TV's Dancing with the Stars. He would have been the winner of the season had most of us understood the show designers' vision about audience opinions equaling audience investment. In a passive environment like TV, who would have thunk it. A new century, a new TV world. O'Hurley is the Season One winner, as far as most of us are concerned. His transition to a Broadway-style musical is seamless.
Match that latent ability to his singing, another under-utilized O'Hurley talent, and voila: a Python-esque Arthur. Spamalot shows promise of going the distance offered by Wynn (rumored to be ten years), preferably with O'Hurley as our Arthur.
Some favorite scenes, for me, were at the French castle. The French Guard hurls a cow over the castle wall and trades lineage and flatulence insults with Arthur and his men. "Go boil your bottom, sons of a silly person. I blow my nose at you, so-called Arthur King!" and would steal the show if it wasn't for the dread Killer Rabbit.
The Monty Python legacy, begun in the '60s, is near-mythic, its fan base huge. The BBC series and the Python films comprise an entire fantasy world. John Cleese and Eric Idle especially, are synonymous with the legend, that they created and populated with wacky nutcakes, practicing slapstick, espousing outrageous ideas and speaking quotable lines that have stood the test of time. Their ability to simplify and break with the 'acceptable,' defined a category of its own—rude, crude hilarity. "So always look on the bright side of death…just before you draw your terminal breath."
John Cleese is another guy that makes me smile, without him having to say anything, before he has even begun to cut up. He personifies the anticipation of laughing. He and Eric Idle are two of the original Pythons: John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Terry Jones, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle and of course, Michael Palin. To complete the framing of the Python phenomena, one must add Idle's partner in musical crime, John Du Prez, who gave wings to the Pythons' lyrics and inanities. Du Prez's collaborations with Idle over the years have brought us brilliant scores, and this musical revisited his earlier works, breathing new life into them, adding considerable material. Their debut on Broadway was well-received, garnering a Grammy and a Tony.
You can get tickets to see this show, or versions of it, here in Vegas; or on Broadway (2005 Tony for best new musical); in London (if you are a kid, you can pay in the amount of your age at the matinees, very clever); or Melbourne, opening in November at Her Majesty's Theatre (maybe Killer Kangaroos?); and on tour throughout the U.S. (highly successful 2007–2008 tour, smashing local box office records wherever they play, from Des Moines to Tulsa. Of course, short of that, you can visit www.montypythonsSpamalot.com and see snippets of the London and Broadway casts doing their thing. You can even buy a CD with Tim Curry singing, as he was the 2005 Broadway debut Arthur (or for that matter you can purchase a Karaoke CDG, Killer Rabbit slippers, pewter castle key chains, etc.). There are no videos of the Vegas show—yet—hhhmmmm.
Go see Spamalot in the spirit of 'living every day as if it were your last': "I'm not dead…yet" and chuckle all the way through the entire show to the peculiar wedding chapel final scenes, "We are not yet dead, so we might as well get wed!"
In Vegas, you might as well!
Photo credit to Carol Rosegg, (supplied by The Wynn publicist, Lauren Bower).
THE GRAIL THEATER—Tickets and Show Times:
Sundays through Wednesdays, 8 p.m.
Dark Thursdays
Two shows on Saturdays, 7:00 & 10:00 p.m.
702.770.WYNN (9966)
888.320.7110
www.wynnlasvegas.com
This is a flash site, so enable pop-ups, for this site, on your browser.
Reviews are © Carol Lane Patterson and reprinted with permission.
