Correction: The current tour of Monty Python’s Spamalot concludes April 14 in Washington, D.C. Because of incorrect information from Kasidy Devlin, one of the show's actors, the wrong date was given in this article.
It’s probably a complete coincidence, but Monty Python’s Spamalot makes its first appearance on a Little Rock stage on April Fools’ Day.
The Phoenix Entertainment touring production of the 2005 Tony Award-winning musical will be at Robinson Center Music Hall at 7:30 p.m. Monday and Tuesday as an add-on to Celebrity Attractions’ Broadway Season.
It’s “lovingly ripped off” from the cult hit movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail, British comedy troupe Monty Python’s cinematic spoof of King Arthur, the Knights of the Round Table and their search for the goblet from which Jesus supposedly sipped at the Last Supper.
The movie was also the first exposure to self-described “Python geek” Kasidy Devlin, who plays Arthur’s minstrel, Sir Robin (of questionable courage), and who was definitely a Python fan before he joined the show.
“I’d seen it on television,” he says, “but I think the first time I knew the name, I was in a video rental store, and I saw The Holy Grail on the shelf.” He was intrigued by the box art (including a photo of the dismembered-but-still-contentious Black Knight), but the shop owner told him he was too young to rent it.
“But then he said it’s a movie that everyone should see, so he let me sneak it out and watch it,” Devlin recalls. “I absolutely devoured it and then I immediately went through the entire [Monty Python’s Flying Circus] TV series. I had the books, the complete scripts, through high school; I had the LPs.”
Devlin also doubles as Brother Maynard (keeper of the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch) and part of several collections of guards. “There are so many people playing so many characters that I don’t think the audience realizes it’s the same actor playing the Black Knight and the father of Swamp Castle,”he says.
He’s been with the show since September 2011. And he appears to have been particularly well-trained for a show that so depends, as this one does, on physical comedy.
He studied “mask performance, melodrama and clowning - not circus clowning, but more Charlie Chaplin character clowning” at Northern California’s Dell’Arte International School of Physical Theatre and with In Bocca Al Lupo in Orvieto, Italy.
Devlin agrees that there’s nothing worse than stale physical comedy, which is one of the big potential pitfalls for this kind of show.
“Your muscles can memorize what’s funny, what gets the reaction,” he explains. “It’s so easy to go through the marks physically and not be present.
“Luckily, with a show like Spamalot there’s so much improvisation, so much room to change the show every night. Performances are always - well, maybe to the audience they don’t seem different, but to the other actors on stage they seem night and day. It really forces you to be 100 percent present because if you’re not, you fall flat on your face.
“I think that’s why the show goes over so well. We’ve played all across the country, in very liberal areas and very conservative areas, and we’ve played rural areas and very metropolitan areas, and it always seems to go over very well - not always the same jokes, of course.
“It’s the ‘immediate-ness’; the audience and the actors are on the same page. Because sometimes we don’t know what’s going to come out of the other person’s mouth. There’s no checkpoints - what the audience is experiencing for the first time, we are experiencing for the first time. There’s a lot of quick wordplay in this show. You definitely have to be on your toes.”
And yes, it’s not unheard for an actor to royally screw something up.
“I’ve often said that to have something go horribly wrong on stage is the greatest gift an actor can have, because the entire audience is on your side and wants you to do well.”
Another potential pitfall is that the show, and particularly the dialogue, is so familiar to so many attendees.
“We get Python audiences and we get musical theater audiences, and they’re both wonderful, but you can always tell by what jokes they laugh at,” Devlin says. “Playing to a Python crowd is like doing a rock concert - they hear the coconuts in the distance, before Arthur even makes an appearance, and sometimes you get a standing ovation.”
And yes, Python audiences will frequently speak the lines at the same time, or even before, the actors, “and in full costume, too, sometimes,” Devlin says. (Tim the Enchanter seems to be the general favorite.)
“It’s really fun. Both myself and King Arthur [Arthur Rowan] are Monty Python geeks, so it’s always fun to come across those people.”
The tour is scheduled to end April 30 at the National Theatre in Washington. “It’s my understanding that this is the very last tour of Broadway’s Spamalot; then the rights open up” to regional theaters and maybe even community theater productions, Devlin says.
“We’ve had a good run; it’s been running since 2005. It is definitely an honor to be part of the cast that’s closing it.”
Monty Python’s Spamalot
7:30 p.m. Monday-Tuesday, Robinson Center Music Hall, West Markham Street and Broadway, Little Rock. Music and lyrics by Eric Idle and John Du Prez, book by Idle, “lovingly ripped off” from the screenplay of Monty Python and the Holy Grail by Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin
Tickets: $64, $48, $38 and $26.50 (no additional fees)
(501) 244-8800
ticketmaster.com
CelebrityAttractions.com
Style, Pages 49 on 03/31/2013