How to go
What: The national tour of “Monty Python’s Spamalot.”
When: 7:30 p.m. Thursday
Where: Kuss Auditorium
Tickets: $34 to $49; visit springfieldartscouncil.com or call (937) 328-3874.
SPRINGFIELD — Someone in a high school somewhere is quoting a line from “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” at this exact second.
Oh, that’s not to say the movie appeals only to high school students, but it’s historically around ninth grade — some may experience it as early as eighth grade — that people get their first taste of this timelessly irreverent 1975 cult classic.
From then, it’s three or four years of endless quoting.
“Bring out yer dead.”
“I fart in your general direction.”
And so on.
The latter would seem to be the most popular of “Grail” quotes — after all, when I told my wife that I had purchased our tickets to see “Spamalot” next week at Kuss Auditorium, she took on this goofy accent and exclaimed, “I fart in your general direction.”
This is all just to serve warning to those season ticket-holders that the crowd Thursday night likely won’t be the same crowd that came to “Fiddler on the Roof.”
“Usually, I’ll get reports from friends and family that, ‘There was this guy behind me who knew the whole show,’ ” said Matt Ban, the actor playing the Black Knight in the national tour of the Tony-winning musical, “lovingly ripped off from the motion picture ‘Monty Python and the Holy Grail.’ ”
There’s probably no need to tattle on them — unless, of course, they’re uncontrollably quoting from “Monty Python’s Flying Circus,” too.
Those are the guys to watch out for. Get an usher’s help right away.
For right now, though, “Spamalot” audiences are still respectful that this is, indeed, a night at the theater — albeit one in which it takes two stagehands to catapult a 45-pound fake cow over a mock medieval castle.
But “Rocky Horror” it ain’t, so leave your coconuts at home.
Even still, it seems to be awfully hard for longtime Python fans to contain themselves.
“Sometimes we’ll have a crowd of Monty Python fans, and they’ll be applauding for the characters they recognize and quoting along,” Ban said. “I completely understand. I grew up watching ‘The Holy Grail’ and being a Monty Python fan.”
It only makes you wonder what took ’em so long to bring the wacky work of Python to the Broadway stage.
The movies made by ye olde British comedy troupe — John Cleese, Michael Palin, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, the late Graham Chapman and American animator Terry Gilliam — were always good for a classy musical number or two.
Who could forget such ditties as “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” (from 1979’s “Life of Brian”) or “Every Sperm is Sacred” (from 1983’s “The Meaning of Life”)?
Ahem.
If you’re all done singing, we’ll continue.
“It’s really just smart, funny humor,” Ban said.
With a score co-written by Idle, “Spamalot” won the 2005 Tony for best musical. (The show closed on Broadway in 2009.)
For those of you who have never seen “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” “Spamalot” tells the story of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table as they seek the fabled grail.
And for those of you who really like statistics, there are 56 cod pieces in the live show.
“The absurdity keeps it fresh for us,” Ban said.
As the Black Knight, Ban, of course, has the good fortune of having his extremities sliced off every night in a sword fight with Arthur.
But once in a while, the absurdity on stage isn’t even in the script.
“I once had my leg fall off too early,” Ban confessed. “Arthur’s line was, ‘Look, you stupid bastard, you’ve got no arms left.’ As he was saying it, my leg slid off.”
Contact this reporter at amcginn@coxohio.com.
Just a flesh wound?
Enjoy this smattering of “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” quotes meticulously cut and pasted from the Internet Movie Database:
"I fart in your general direction."
"Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries."
"Now go away or I shall taunt you a second time."
"Please! This is supposed to be a happy occasion. Let's not bicker and argue over who killed who."
“It’s just a flesh wound.”
“Run away!”
“Burn her anyway!”
"Are you suggesting coconuts migrate?"
"It's not a question of where he grips it. It's a simple question of weight ratios. A five-ounce bird could not carry a one-pound coconut."
"What ... is your favorite color?"
"What ... is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?"
"We are the Knights who say ... Ni!"
"Cut down a tree with a herring? It can't be done."
“None shall pass.”
"And the Lord spake, saying, 'First shalt thou take out the Holy Pin. Then shalt thou count to three, no more, no less. Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, then lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch toward thy foe, who, being naughty in my sight, shall snuff it.' "
"We'll not risk another frontal assault. That rabbit's dynamite."
“Bring out yer dead.”
“I’m not dead!”
"I'm French. Why do you think I have this outrageous accent, you silly king?"
About the Author