Spamalot at CIBC from May 19-31

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Monty Python’s Spamalot is pure gleeful joy! Playing at CIBC thru May 31st - Review By: Paul Lisnek

****/4

Monty Python’s Spamalot is pure gleeful joy! The best part is that the show understands its own irresistible silliness and leans into it with perfect pace and a crowd-pleasing swagger. The cast performs knowing the joke is the point; there’s no apology for the hilarious chaos on stage, or the contagious laughter that pervades the intimate home of the CIBC Theatre. 

Over two decades after its pre-Broadway try-out in this very same theater, Spamalot returns “home” still feeling fresh through small tweaks and updates to references thus treating the Monty Python brand of comedy not with nostalgia, but as the engine for a lively theatrical experience. The cast commits fully to the comedy. In fact, after the show, I met up with Sir Galahad (played by Leo Roberts, who is the subject of my Spamalot interview available now at Curtain Call Chicago on YouTube) to ask about a moment where his prop leg fell off seemingly in error at the moment. King Arthur appears to lose his composure to laughter and I wondered if that moment was planned. Leo assured me it was a prop fail and the on stage break-up was real. The best part is that the audience loved and enjoyed that mishap just as much as the cast!! 

Much of the score is familiar through other Monty Python movies and vehicles, and here helps propel the production to enormous laughter; the familiar Monty Python rhythms give the production momentum and shape, and insures the show is a true Broadway experience, and not just a collection of sketches. That balance of wit, updating and showmanship is what has kept the show so durable, from Broadway through its revival and onto the road.

At CIBC Theatre, the show benefits from the kind of intimacy that supports big audience laughter and large-scale musical comedy; this is not unnoticed by the cast (says Leo Roberts) who says he loves performing in this theater! The atmosphere of a packed house can sharpen every absurd pause, every deadpan take, and every outrageous payoff. Succinctly put, Spamalot does not portend to be high art, rather it is superb entertainment with teeth and it succeeds!

Spamalot plays at the CIBC Theatre thru May 31st; tickets can be purchased at: www.BroadwayInChicago.com