By Steven Suskin
15 May 2005
Listening to "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" on the original cast album of Mike Nichols and Eric Idle's Spamalot, you can't help but think — well, here, finally, is as toe-tapping a good old-fashioned show tune as you could hope to find. Jaunty, ingratiating and laced with a black comedy lyric that keeps it snappily bubbling along. Never mind that it was written in the dark ages, relatively speaking [circa 1978 A.D.], without any thought given to live theatrical use. This is as Broadway a show tune as they come, and it works like so-called gangbusters.
I, for one, also can't help but think that said song doesn't appear until the opening of the second act, which is to say the sixteenth track of the new CD. Spamalot is not the first unstoppable-blockbuster-of-a musical comedy to come along recently counterbalancing an overabundance of comedy with a score of k-rations. (Spam, if you will). This has become the new formula for success, it seems, as attested by the 3,000 rollicking theatregoers who pour out of catty-corner playhouses on 44th Street every night. Still, wouldn't it be loverly to have some songs, too?
Oh, well. Spamalot does very nicely. The musical numbers, as they are, are the equivalent of sight gags. They make their point, often hitting the mark extremely well, but the music continues well past the joke's peak. (Many of the songs deliver their content in the opening line of the lyric.) This is a show that starts with the narrator announcing that the action takes place in England. England, he tells us twice; so we immediately go into an opening number about happy life in Finland, complete with choristers saluting each other with sardines in what is titled the "Fisch Schlapping Dance." Has anybody seen Mel Brooks in the neighborhood?
The joke — the narrator (and the librettist) said England, but the chorus (and the songwriters) are in Finland — registers in a matter of moments, but we get 62 seconds of song. (Sixty-two seconds on the CD; it seems longer in the theatre.) After which the narrator returns to repeat that he said England, not Finland. End of song. But why, one wonders, did we have so much of it? Why didn't the narrator come out after the first three words ("Finland, Finland, Finland") or maybe even after the ninth word ("Finland") or the sixteenth word ("Finland"), and stop this misplaced nonsense? Having spent money on the costumes, though, the show (and the song) apparently must go on. And it does, laughingly so; if you find the slip twixt England and Finland to be uproarious, here's the entertainment for you and the hordes thronging the Shubert. I guess that all's well that end's well, to quote that great Finnish playwright.
Monty Python gets top billing at Spamalot, as seems only proper. David Hyde Pierce, Tim Curry and Hank Azaria score smoothly enough with their musical numbers; the formerly little-known Sara Ramirez sings up a storm (and how!), and for her efforts has been veritably pelted with fisch. I mean superlatives. Relatively hidden away, but very much present on the CD, are Michael McGrath and Christian Borle; both do yeoman work, and are worth their weight, musical comedy-wise, in coconut shells.
Sitting through Spamalot, on stage or CD, one can't help feel that the musical portion of the proceedings are subsidiary to the verbal and sight and costume and prop gags. This despite the protean efforts of the music department, namely Todd Ellison, Glen Kelly and Larry Hochman. They give John Du Prez and Eric Idle's score high polish. But please, no songs about Poland!
The songs, as they are, are highly fragmented; the CD track listings indicate only five stand-alone numbers that top three minutes. (Spamalot appears to have set a new record for one-minute songs.) Orchestrator Hochman does an especially fine job with the aforementioned "Bright Side," but there's little else that catches the ear here. A phrase which, I admit, sounds like a Spamalot sight gag.
One could formulate an interesting discourse comparing the cast albums of Spamalot and Camelot, but to what end? Lerner and Loewe's olden gold record offers melody filled, high entertainment. But on stage one is leaden while the other's gold. The new King Arthur, and the old King Mike, handily take the crown. Even without tunes. Continued...
