BWW Reviews: SPAMALOT, Richmond Theatre, January 26 2015

The Pythons are often considered to be The Beatles of comedy - after all, there are plenty of parallels. So if the Monty Python's Flying Circus TV sketches are the equivalents of The Beatles' early 60s three-minute singles and Monty Python and the Holy Grail is the potential of Revolver, that makes Life of Brian the Pythons' Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. And Spamalot? Well, how about Yellow Submarine? It has something of that film's ersatz quality to it - we're not seeing the real Pythons and the jokes, though splendid, feel somewhat shoehorned into the quest. But it's not really Yellow Submarine either, an artistic success (without any real need for the songs) that influenced many (including Python animator Terry Gilliam), whereas Spamalot is more a box office success - but a huge one!

It's easy to see why. Eric Idle has used "Holy Grail" as the base for a splendid meta-musical, exercising his talent for pastiche (the songs well crafted in various genres, if not tinged with long-time musical collaborator Neil Innes's trademark poignancy in tunes and lyrics) that gives us plenty of the setpieces from the movie and skewers a few musical cliches along the way. Standouts include the Lloyd Webber-bashing "The Song That Goes Like This" and the patter song bespoke for each venue, "You Won't Succeed In Showbiz".

The laughs come thick (or, at least, broad) and fast with the audience lapping up the silliness, unconcerned by a lack of the edge that Python never quite lost, despite the millions, the stadium gigs and the adulation. This show knows its audience, and knows that it's there for a good time and not a long time dissecting Python's place in the Pantheon. (To be fair, the edge is there in the Broadway and original West End version of "You Won't Succeed In Showbiz" - and it would have been nice to hear that version, at least in London).

Having said all that, Spamalot as a whole never quite matches up to the sum of its parts. Sarah Earnshaw sings splendidly and gives it the full diva in Act Two and there's some good vocal work from Richard Kent camping it up as Prince Herbert. But too many of the cast can't really sing nor dance very well at all. Todd Carty brokers his charm into a decent performance as Patsy (the King's Baldrick) and Joe Pasquale may be a very decent bloke and celebrity, but he's no song and dance man. Throw in a bit of fourth wall breaking, a singalong and genuine on-stage corpsing, and we're veering dangerously close to panto, which is fine - but the material is surely worth more than that. Avenue Q shows that a send-up works better with top notch technical performances.

Still, absolutely none of that matters to the vast majority of a house that comprised every demographic in London. They knew, as I did, what they would get with Spamalot and, as I did, they laughed pretty much from curtain to curtain. And if it felt like everybody involved never really got into top gear, well, as was the case with John Cleese's infamous Bentley, maybe they didn't need to.

Spamalot continues at Richmond Theatre until 31 January and is on tour.

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