Curtain rises on Spamalot

A new musical ripped straight from the 1975 motion picture Monty Python and the Holy Grail is coming to St. Albert.

The Bellerose Composite High performing arts musical and technical theatre programs are mounting Monty Python’s Spamalot for a three-day run Feb. 10 to 12 at the Arden Theatre.

The Eric Idle and John Du Prez’s award-winning version of the Camelot legend was designed to be pointless, spoofy and delightfully silly.

“There are no rules in this musical. Everything gets twisted through time and reference and it’s amazing it fits together in a seamless way,” says director Mark Samuel.

The musical tells the heroic tale of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table’s jaunty quest for the holy relic. Throughout the mish-mash of an odyssey, Spamalot features a chorus line of legless knights, dead people, cocktail maids, dancing nuns and a vain Lady of the Lake.

The gag-filled musical delivers an all-singing, all-dancing cast as well as plenty of British humour and slapstick including cow flinging and fish slapping.

“It spoofs all musicals with a variety of references to West Side Story, Fiddler on the Roof, Grease and Phantom. It’s silly. It’s brilliant. It’s fast-paced. The dialogue is quick and funny,” Samuel notes.

Starting off in a medieval Scandinavian village, the production quickly shifts to England where the creators lance everyone from overworked peasants and chanting monks to plague victims and rabble-rousing knights. And that’s before a Vegas style Camelot comes into view.

Expect parodies of lewd French soldiers, an impractical Trojan horse, can-can dancers, gay sons and evil monster rabbits before the grail is found.

The cast of 28 student actors handles about 60-odd roles. Andy Demuynck as King Arthur leads this band of brigands while Holly Riehl is Patsy, his Jewish sidekick squire that supplies horse-clopping sounds with a pair of coconut halves. And Rachel Matichuk as the Lady of the Lake slides into diva-esque mode complaining she’s tired of being snubbed and wants more script lines.

Unlike most school musicals that provide certain dialogue parameters, Spamalot offers more flexibility.

“Whatever jokes are in there can be as big or as little as you want and you can add smaller or bigger visual gags. It gives the kids and me as the director the freedom to try different things.”

Samuel goes on to say that the only tears are from laughter.

“This is the funniest show I’ve ever seen. Other shows come with lovely themes and songs. This show, even if you’re not a Monty Python fan, this is one of the funniest shows I’ve experienced.”