If you've never seen a professional, fully-staged production of the Monty Python musical Spamalot, don't watch this. It's not that. It's a production mounted by Overland High School, a performing arts school in Aurora, Colorado. If you have seen the show done by pros…well, you still won't want to watch all of this — it's an hour and 48 minutes — but you might enjoy skipping around and marveling at the ambitiousness, effort and occasional raw talent on display here.
I would have thought even seasoned professionals could not assemble anything resembling Spamalot with ten times the budget these folks probably had, plus you have to add in the handicap of beginners in difficult roles and that they couldn't say "shit" and other words normally heard throughout this play.
I'm impressed by the ingenuity, the enterprise and by the fact that some of these kids are pretty good for their age and experience. One day, folks will watch this video to see the young, amateurish beginnings of someone who has become a real and true star on Broadway. I'll betcha Nathan Lane and Audra MacDonald were once in things like this.
So jump about. The "Not Yet Dead" routine starts at 7:50, the "Camelot" number is at 26:10, the battle with the Black Knight is at 58 minutes in and the "Jews" number commences around 1:03:40. If you do not set your expectations too high, you too may be impressed. When I went to high school, I doubt our drama department could have pulled off ten minutes of this let alone the whole danged play…
