Eric Idle's latest project, his long-awaited Monty Python musical, Spamalot, has singing cows, a killer rabbit, a legless knight, flatulent Frenchmen and young women demanding spankings. It is, he admits, "lovingly ripped off" from the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which cost just £400,000 to make in 1975. The stage production is epic in scale, with direction by Mike Nichols, who won an Oscar for The Graduate. Investors, who have put up £6 million, are gambling that it will be as big a worldwide hit as The Producers, after a Chicago opening on Tuesday. Last week, tickets went on sale for a Broadway run in March, with Nichols saying: "I knew the material was hilarious and that I laughed at it all the time. But I still had to know that crucial thing: what is this show really all about?" Then Tim Curry, the actor who made his name as Dr Frank-N-Furter in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, walked onto the rehearsal room stage in New York. "About one minute and 15 seconds into the first reading, Tim pronounced his lines: 'I am King Arthur and these are the knights of the rhooond table.' And then I had it. "It was that upper-class accent that Tim knew to use instinctively. The way he pronounced that one word reminded me that everything English is, finally, about class. I knew where to go from that moment on." The biggest production number is a raucous version of We're Knights of the Round Table ("We dance when e'er we're able"), featuring Las Vegas-style dancing divas in body stockings. John Cleese is said to have taped "the voice of God", previously played by Graham Chapman, who died in 1989. Idle began working on the script from the moment he saw The Producers on its first night in New York. The surviving Pythons have a veto over any Python project. Idle waited until he had a draft script to show the others, and had recorded six versions of the songs. Terry Jones, co-director of the film, arranged a conference call, and a particular tune persuaded the others to approve the project - The Song That Goes Like This, a skit on Lloyd Webber ballads. It was agreed that while everybody provided constructive criticism, it was Idle's project. He said: "If it flops, they can just blame me." Jones said there was a feeling that Idle would not appreciate interference from "superannuated white-haired ex-Pythons". Nichols, 73, insisted that the show be more than a "Python Flying Circus". "There are some things you know will be there - killer rabbits - but you also need to feel that you're getting somewhere; that it isn't a random review." He hand-picked the stars. David Hyde Pierce, from the television show Frasier, plays Brave Sir Robin. A Python fan since childhood, the actor said he told his agent: "I don't care what the part is, I just want it." Hank Azaria, the voice of Moe the bartender in The Simpsons, is both Sir Lancelot and the French Taunter. Lancelot is thought to be more murderous than in the movie, as well as being sexually disorientated. Nichols said that, in explaining his approach, he told a friend: "You know how in the movie there's a cow that flies out of a castle and lands on a page? Well, in the musical, the cow has a singing part." With the script under wraps, there is no word on whether the cast will include the film's 142 Ecuadorian llamas. According to Idle, the movie, while dealing with an heroic theme, was really quite small in scale. "We couldn't afford armies or even horses - thank God for coconuts. That means most of the scenes can be fairly easily reconstructed on stage. "There are technical problems - just how do you lop off people's arms and legs on stage? But somebody else has to solve them. That's the great thing about being a writer." Idle, 61, picked the Camelot-pun title, it seems, both as a tribute to junk-mail and Spam tinned meat. Idle, born in South Shields and now living in Los Angeles, worked on the songs with composer John Du Prez, who played trumpet on Always Look on the Bright Side of Life"which was sung by Idle in the crucifixion scene of The Life of Brian. Nichols sums up Spamalot as "strange", a show in which "you laugh and laugh, and at the same time you don't know why you are so moved." UK News News » In UK News Lightning storm in pictures William Hague in pictures Monty Python Live (Mostly):
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