Idle musings bring Python gang out of the can and on to the stage

[emad]

Times
From James Bone in New York
Monty Python's flatulent Frenchmen, knights who say 'Ni', killer rabbits and holy hand grenades are to get the musical treatment


AND now for something completely different . . . after the recent success of a Broadway version of The Producers, Monty Python and the Holy Grail is to be the next classic comedy to be reborn as a musical.

With the approval of his fellow Pythons, Eric Idle will launch a singing and dancing version of the 1975 film next week at a theatre in Chicago.

Called Spamalot in homage to the classic Monty Python Spam song, the production promises to bring a singing King Arthur and his bickering Knights of the Round Table, complete with clopping coconuts, flatulent Frenchmen and killer rabbits, to the stage.

Idle, 61, who recently recovered from knee surgery for a broken tendon, has spent the past three years turning the film’s memorable lines, such as “I’m not dead”, “Run away!” and “I fart in your general direction”, into show tunes.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-1407625,00.html

[regweb]

1. I am a HUGE Python fan

I just bought myself the complete TV series set for Christmas ($200 and worth every penny). I'm not so sure about a musical, though. I always thought their music was their weakest humor (with the exception of the lumberjack song, of course)

[asthmaticeog]

2. Mixed feelings...

Idle toured a Python musical revue a couple of years ago, and he was the only Python in it. It sucked. I don't have words for how bad it was. The handful of audience members who came dressed in makeshift Gumbie costumes were more amusing than the actors doing the absent Pythons' roles. As much as the idea of a live Holy Grail appeals to me, I'm wary if Idle's the only one involved.