After 14 years, the Tony Award-winning Monty Python’s Spamalot has returned to Broadway. Inspired by the classic film Monty Python and the Holy Grail, but including references to other works by the famed Monty Python comedy troupe and other nods to pop culture, the mirthful musical is lighting up the Great White Way once again. God sends King Arthur and his Knights of the Roundtable on a comic quest to find the Holy Grail…and some crazy characters.
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American Songwriter spoke to Spamalot’s musical director, John Bell—who handles conducting, arrangements, and supervision of the score—for his insights into what makes a show like this work so well. Comedy timing in musical theater is not as easy as it looks, as he attests, but one must also make smart musical choices.
Maintain the Rhythm and Timing
“When you introduce music into something, that gives it an inherent pulse and a rhythm,” explains Bell. “Even in book scenes, there has to be a rhythm to that as well [as they] set up the song. There will be many different ways you can think of it, depending on the situation. Sometimes with a song you might want to actually change the rhythm of what’s been going on in the scene or interrupt it. Sometimes you want to continue it and get on that train. Timing and pacing in musical theater is really, really essential. Maybe it’s the secret element to the show really being successful and remaining buoyant.”
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He advises to leave enough room for jokes to land. In the opening scene, the show’s narrator introduces us to England, and we suddenly see a group of people doing a silly “Finnish” fish slapping dance. The bit lasts 90 seconds until the narrator chimes in, “I said England.” The surreal atmosphere lasts just long enough for the joke to hit, and then quickly transition to the next scene.
“I think a lot of times in the Python humor, there’s a joke and there’s actually the reaction to…sometimes it’s from the audience, sometimes it’s from another character on stage, and sometimes it’s both,” Bell says. “You need this space to land the language, the space for the reaction, wherever it’s coming from. But then you’ve got to go on. It’s leaving just enough time for the audience to be in on everything, but then no more time than that. Because as they as soon as they are a couple of steps ahead of us, you risk losing them.”
Strive for Lyrical Economy and Musical Diversity
Make sure that you’re not overstaying your welcome with humor. Clearly set up the jokes and maintain a rhythm of set-up/punchline/laugh, then move on to the next. “And music, because of its rhythmic structure, can really help you with that,” Bell says. But be economical and interlock the puzzle pieces without leaving too much to chance.
“For a show like this, understanding style and song form also really adds to the comedy,” Bell asserts, pinpointing the first big number “I’m Not Dead” in which the Not Dead Fred character proves that he’s not deceased by animatedly doing Ragtime dances. “You could have made a million choices with that song, how to compose it musically, but whoever encouraged landing on that choice is absolutely brilliant,” Bell says.
He adds, “I think so much of comedy is also parody and spoof, so the more breadth of knowledge and understanding that you have of music and music through eras, the more informed and smarter decisions you’re going to make about even just how to compose [for a show], or what feel that the songs should be in. You look at how this score was put together, and there are just really brilliant choices all around. What’s happening musically is just giving them such a delicious platform.”
[AS OF THIS WRITING: Spamalot Tickets Are Available! – Get ‘Em Right Here]
Collaborate with the Creators
This applies more to revivals than debut productions. “I think with any piece, particularly when the writers are still alive, anything that you want to deviate [from or] incorporate any new material, or change anything, you have to get permission from the authors,” stresses Bell. Spamalot’s new production team sat down with creators Eric Idle and John Du Prez to consult with them on different ideas. Sometimes they agreed with what was being proposed, and at other times they offered a counter idea.
“Obviously, Eric is a comic genius,” Bell declares. “I think he has a great sense of what is going to land and what isn’t going to land. But a lot of times his response to things would be: ‘See when you get an audience.’ Because actually rehearsing comedy in a rehearsal room with just the company gets deadly after a while. We might laugh for a while, but after a few weeks you can’t just expect your colleagues to be laughing at you all day long. So the audience is the last character in the play. You always need to test the audience response to anything that you do, but particularly with a broad comedy like Spamalot.”
The Audience Is the Crucial Last Character
Bell loves previews because they allow for a visceral audience response and then the chance to tailor the show “to be as impactful as possible.” To riff on a Holy Grail line—sometimes a joke might slay, or it might just be a flesh wound.
“If a joke lands and people are losing their minds, you might not go on because first of all, you want the audience to hear your next line,” Bell notes. “So if the response is so raucous, you might have to let that die down a little bit and then go on, but then the next night is different. It might be much more medium, so you do go on.
“I think [in] doing a comedy like this that has so many big jokes that are garnering big audience response, it’s part of the discipline. It’s never quite going to be the same twice. There are some places within songs that have some room for some improv and can vary a little bit, but we have what I would say are our pillars where these three things will always happen no matter what. When we get to that third thing, then it’s over no matter what, but the spaces in between those pillars can vary a little bit based on what’s happening with the crowd.”
Keep It Cohesive
Bell feels Idle’s and Du Prez’s score takes audiences on “a journey through musical eras that they know and hopefully love. We lovingly spoof all of that.”
“A Song That Goes Like This” is “a loving poke of the quasi-pop love ballads of the big mega-musicals of the ‘90s.” Among other tunes, “All for One” is a campfire folk tune, “Knights of the Round Table” is “a big, brassy Vegas spectacular,” and “Find Your Grail” combines gospel and Beatlesque music as singer Leslie Rodriguez Kritzer takes us on a journey through pop diva styles of the ‘80s and ‘90s.
Yet the overall show remains cohesive and the characters retain their identities as they move through the different numbers; the material is performed deftly and with spirit. “We have an incredibly amazing cast of first-rate clowns and first-rate singers, which is not an easy combination to find,” Bell beams. “We’re so blessed and lucky to have them.”
Photo by Cindy Ord/Getty Images
