The following is a review of a production of the show, Monty Python's Spamalot. It contains information that warrants a big, fat SPOILER ALERT. If you don't want to know what happens, read no further.
Now then: Due to the Stagehands' Strike, you can't see Spamalot on Broadway at the moment but you can in Columbus, Ohio, at least while the national touring company is parked here for the next few days. This evening, my friend Carolyn and I, accompanied by Maggie Thompson of The Comics Buyers Guide, saw it at the Ohio Theater, not far from where the Mid-Ohio Con is taking place this weekend. If this troupe is wandering anywhere near you — according to this page, they go next to Toledo — you might want to do so. I dunno how the original cast was in New York or how the currently-idle cast there is but these folks put on an awfully good show.
It is, of course, freely (very freely) adapted from one of my and probably your all-time favorite movies, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, but there's an awful lot that's new. And funny. And even hummable. They also have one of the funniest Playbills I've ever seen.
I did want to mention the main cast members because they were all quite splendid: Michael Siberry, Esther Stilwell, Ben Davis, Jeff Dumas, Christopher Gurr, Patrick Heusinger, Robert Petkoff and Christopher Sutton. And there was one other person on stage who really gave an outstanding performance, and I think he deserves special mention. I am speaking, of course, of me.
Here's where that SPOILER ALERT kicks in. At one point in the show, they haul an audience member who's sitting in a certain seat up on stage to be a part of a key scene. Guess who was the lucky (?) person sitting in that seat. It was rather odd to be watching the play one moment and being on stage and a part of it, the next.
In a situation like that, you kind of have to play dumb because the show's on auto-pilot and anything odd you do can only screw things up for them. So I nodded and grinned as they asked my name and then used it in subsequent dialogue and a song…and then returned to my seat with a Polaroid photo of me and the cast, and a little Python Foot trophy they present to whoever gets conscripted to participate. Carolyn and Maggie were both thrilled, and not because I was in that seat instead of one of them. They just thought the show was better with me in it. If you go see it, I probably won't be in it but don't let that stop you.