If Spamalot doesn't tickle your funnybone, call a doctor

It’s not true that what happens in Camelot stays in Camelot. In the case of the touring musical mirth that has moved noisily into Chrysler Hall it gets the Monty Python treatment and becomes Spam.

Drive around downtown Norfolk and you will probably be able to hear the guffaws of laughter coming from the place. One man said he laughed until his face hurt. There was no real reason to doubt him.

King Arthur and his ragtag bunch of knights are looking for the Holy Grail and encouraging the audience to find their own grail - all to the tune of the evening’s infectious theme song: “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” (taken from Python’s movie “The Life of Brian” which once stirred a spirited controversy in Norfolk). This, though, is a song to whisk away the woes of pesky economic reports in the outside world. The show is set in 932 A. D. where, after all, they had their own share of plagues and pestilence. If they got through it, so can we.

We have curvaceous chorus girls who come up out of a not-so-mythical lake and become cheerleaders for Sir Galahad’s induction into the army. In the same show we have The Knights Who Say “Ni,” a stuffed cow that is catapulted through the air to defend a castle, flatulent Frenchmen (very flatulent), a deadly rabbit with big teeth, The Holy Hand Grenade, a fighting knight with no arms or legs and (my favorite moment) arms that appear from nowhere when someone yells “Arms for the Poor.”

It’s sooooooo silly. It’s soooo absurd. It’s hilarious, even for those who managed to resist the 1975 movie “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” which is its source. Come to think of it, that was pretty easy to resist. It’s one of those movies sane people tend to fight until they’ve seen it over a half dozen times and then begin to get into the spirit of knights who gallop around on invisible horses with the sound of clopping hooves simulated by clicking coconut shells.

Monty Python isn’t a person but a group of British actors and writers (and one American) that performed their comedy show “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” on the BBC from 1969 to 1974 and, against all the odds, became a hit in America too. This musical version, which is ending its almost three-year Broadway run in a few weeks, has been the one show that guys have made their own, in contrast to all the shows to which they’ve been dragged by wives or mistresses. (Maybe guys are just sillier).

The Python fans were out in force on opening night, loudly cheering familiar routines before they were even performed. But for theater people, who want more, there are lots of extras that show that Broadway is not far from Camelot. There’s a spoof of Andrew Lloyd Webber romantic tunes with “The Song That Goes Like This” (complete with a chandelier to suggest “Phantom of the Opera” which remains one of the biggest commercial successes at Chrysler).

All this was directed by Mike Nichols who, up until this, might have been considered to have more sense. After all he won an Academy Award for directing “The Graduate” and was nominated for “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.” He got a little wild here. Maybe only Diane Sawyer knows the real Nichols. There are contrasts.

Broadway veteran Jonathan Hadary, whom we saw in this in New York, plays the regal King Arthur as a befuddled monarch who often has trouble convincing anyone that he is a king. Hadary is a perfect example of the show’s most winning device: He plays it straight. There is usually no hint that these characters know they are funny.

Esther Stilwell is the leading lady (a device created for the show because Python episodes usually had no women). She’s the Lady of the Lake and steps out of the show to protest the fact that her part is too small in something called “The Diva’s Lament.” She has a big voice and, maybe as a nod to local show business royalty, does a bit of scat a la Ella Fitzgerald. There’s also a touch of Cher.

Christopher Sutton does a jaunty jig to prove that “I’m Not Dead Yet” when he climbs out from a bunch of corpses. (A move which prompts the lively sale of “I’m Not Dead Yet” T shirts in the lobby). James Beaman persistently soils his armor in fits of cowardice that are laughingly chronicled by a pesky group of strolling minstrels.

Among the most gifted clowns was Matthew Greer who did the main Knight who Says “Ni” and an enchanter who is known simply as Tim.

Not to be strangers, there are also ad lib jokes about Sarah Palin’s wardrobe and a nod to the local notoriety of General MacArthur coupled with Missy “Misdemeanor” Elliot.

It’s all a hoot.

If you don’t laugh, get to your doctor immediately. You’re dead.

Mal Vincent, (757) 446-2347, mal.vincent@pilotonline.com.