Find Your Grail – Spamalot

We went to see the Toronto stop on the tour for Todd’s birthday. He’s a huge Monty Python fan, so he’d been looking forward to it for quite a while. He even bought the CD ahead of time, but didn’t listen to it because he didn’t want to spoil any of the jokes. He had also shown me the Holy Grail film a few months ago, so I knew the source material now, and was able to spot the pieces that came from the film, and those that deviated.

Anyway, by and large it was the same show I saw on Broadway – I didn’t notice any major changes for the tour. The cast, of course, was different, but the lack of the big names of the original cast didn’t honestly make that much difference (unlike some other shows, that can’t seem to survive without the stars). I especially liked Michael Siberry as Arthur, and Tom Deckman, if not *quite* as hysterical as Christian Borle, was nevertheless very funny in all of his various parts.

The only cast member we were a bit disappointed with was Pia Glenn as the Lady of the Lake. She was quite difficult to understand when singing, and although the role definitely calls for some overacting, it just wasn’t as artfully done as Sara Ramirez in the Broadway cast. Guess it just goes to show it’s not that easy to overact properly! 🙂

I still loved all the musical parody, although “You Can’t Succeed on Broadway” wasn’t quite as funny as I remembered it – I’d probably hyped it up a bit too much in my mind. I also found the first act dragged a bit in the middle, which I don’t remember feeling in New York – it’d be interesting to know if that feeling increased the more times you see it.

All in all though, we both enjoyed it, as did the audience at large. At the end of the night, Todd said he still prefers the movie, but he had a really good time.