LIKE much in life that is sublimely silly, “Spamalot” is even better the second time around. More remarkably, so is the entire cast.
Fast approaching its first birthday, Eric Idle’s Monty Python musical is, courtesy of Mike Nichols’ staging, tighter and tauter than ever – the actors now throwing themselves into the show like killer lemmings jumping off a cliff.
The cast remains unchanged except for two newcomers: the formidable Simon Russell Beale as King Arthur and Lauren Kennedy as the Lady of the Lake.
The quietly charismatic Beale – the current king of Prince Hamlets, the president of Iagos, admired from Stratford-upon-Avon to Brooklyn-upon-East River – is making his unexpected Broadway musical debut tip-toeing his way through the clip-clopping coconuts.
Luckily, Beale – who’ll lead the cast of the London production in the fall – funny-walks and double-takes into this wondrous comedy musical, head unbowed, accent undiluted, charmingly replacing and reupholstering Tim Curry’s pristine King Arthur, with all the plump authority in the world.
And Beale – previously known to New York only for his Shakespeare, Chekhov and Stoppard – can actually sing. No real surprise there, for he was once, as I happily recall, a masterly Dr. Pangloss in Leonard Bernstein’s “Candide” at his usual stomping ground, Britain’s Royal National Theatre.
Of course, there may be a difference between Bernstein and Voltaire on the one hand, and Python and Idle on the other. If there was, it didn’t faze Beale for one minute.
He effortlessly fused with the show’s existing stars, the multi-roled David Hyde Pierce and Hank Azaria, while giving his own grave and comic take on Monty Python’s Camelot-challenged King.
Kennedy, the new Lady of the Lake, is initially a touch more watery than her knockout predecessor, Sara Ramirez. Yet everyone else is brilliant – including, of course, those versatile and protean stalwarts Christopher Sieber, Michael McGrath, Steve Rosen and Christian Borle.
If I had to die laughing- and this is not, you understand, any coded suicide wish – there would be few shows in history about which I would feel less resentment in laying down my life.
“Spamalot” reigns.
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SPAMALOT
[****] (Four stars)
The Shubert Theatre, 225 W. 44th St.; (212) 239-6200.