I must admit, I’m a bit of a slave to Eric Idle and the Monty Python troupe. There’s something strangely appealing about trouts and dead parrots that I really can’t resist. But now for something completely different…

Spamalot’s been in Toronto for a couple weeks now, its second run in the city after going back to Broadway for another successful outing. Due to a bit of Ticketmaster magic on my Dad’s part back in April, myself and the parents had three tickets for Sunday’s performance, the last week for the show here in Toronto.

I must admit, it was my first true theatre show, high-school outings nonwithstanding. Yet, I felt strangely at home with the whole affair, which made the whole experience a whole lot more enjoyable. Of course, that wont stop some people, like the man beside me who felt it necessary to talk incessantly throughout most of the show, much to my dismay.

Spamalot, for the most part, loosely follows the misadventures of King Arthur found in the Python’s Holy Grail. You get everything you’d expect from a Python film of this magnitude, from the Knights of Ni to the Holy Handgrenade. Yet, there were a couple surprises which made for interesting diversions from traditional Python lore. Gone were the castle virgins, only to be replaced by an amusing, pride-themed Lancelot coming-out party. Additionally, it was to the delight of the audience that Idle was able to work in Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, a Python staple.

Yet, while much of Python’s humour still shines through, you can’t help but feel it would be so much more effective with the cast fans have come to know and love. Staples of Grail, like the farting Frenchmen and shrubbery-crazed Knights of Ni, simply don’t seem to have the same punch in their delivery as they should.

For the most part, though, Holy Grail translated surprisingly well into a theatre-bound production. The humour appeared as fresh as it was some thirty-odd years ago, and part of the fun was simply seeing how some of the sketches could be pulled off in a convincing manner. Scenes, like those with God and the killer rabbit, came at the behest of a particularly ingenious set, which succeeded in appearing as whimsical and engaging as the material which inspired it.

All in all, breaking the fourth wall has never been this fun.