Spamalot
Saturday, 25th November 2006 by Julie
When Tom first went to New York, back in January last year, Spamalot was just preparing to start out on Broadway.
And Tom was gutted to find out that it wouldn’t start until after he left for home.
On a subsequent visit to New York when I joined him, we tried to see it and found a queue outside the theatre that went to the end of the block and round the corner! (So we saw Fiddler on the Roof instead, and that was excellent.)
So when at last we heard that Spamalot was coming to London (back in February) we felt we had to get ourselves some tickets. And a couple of weeks back, after 8 months of waiting, we finally got to see it…
The first amusement on the night, was the souveneir stall (“Ye Olde Rippey-Offey Shoppe”) outside. They had a grand collection of show-paraphenalia including several different comedy shirts (“I’m not dead yet”), tins of spam, and killer-rabbit slippers.
There had been much hype about Tim Curry playing King Arthur (from the original Broadway version) so it was great that he’d transferred to London for the start of the show’s run, even if the cast had lost David Hyde-Pierce. 
The play itself was pretty much everything I expected. The story lacked some of the cohesion that the movie had, but there were plenty of laugh-out-load moments. (The bulk of these were lifted directly from the movie.)
Though there were one or two numbers which clearly fitted a lot better in a Broadway version of the play than in London, it was nevertheless great to see some of the Python gems acted out live. And the scenery and acting were first-rate. Overall, a good evening’s entertainment. 
