Not dead yet: Spamalot revival shows that sophisticated silliness is timeless
Hear the coconuts clap again as the Arthurian classic “trots” back onstage
Shalom, Broadway lovers!
In today’s Premium Weekly Blast: a MARQUEE announcement, a review of the revival of Spamalot, a clips reel of the life and work of the just-departed Chita Rivera, a Broadway Blast about Pippin, a Piano Talk about Harmony, an anagram game, and a Last Blast about West Side Story.
GRAND PREMIERE ANNOUNCEMENT: Now that the Weekly Blast is in its fourth year, it’s time for a rebrand. From now on, this substack will be MARQUEE: The Broadway Maven’s Weekly Blast. MARQUEE now has 9,300 subscribers and 1.7 million views. Every issue is filled with sparkling content that will help you think more deeply about musical theater. How about purchasing a Premium subscription? And if you’re not ready for that, how about giving this issue a “like” by pressing ❤️ above?
REVIEW: If you attend the current revival of Spamalot, you may want to bring some oxygen. That’s because the nonstop bizarre but hilarious gags, jokes, and preposterous situations may make you laugh so hard, you’ll need to catch your breath.
James Monroe Iglehart is at the center of the show’s comic impact. A Tony winner for playing the Genie in Aladdin, Iglehart shows his comic range in this role that sometimes requires deadpan delivery in response to a variety of peculiar, outrageous circumstances (like killer rabbits, plague victims who are “not dead yet” and the truculent knights who say “Ni”). Also outstanding is a manically versatile Ethan Slater (Spongebob Squarepants) in a variety of roles.
As always, the funniest song is “You Won’t Succeed on Broadway,” with its main gag (spoiler alert) “if you don’t have any Jews.” As presented by Sir Robin (Jonathan Bennett, still crushworthy 20 years after Mean Girls) the song is filled with puns and delicious wordplay (“if it’s not kosher, then no show, Sir”) that alone make the show worth attending.
(It was fun last weekend when “King Arthur” acknowledged me sitting in the front row after he invited the Jews in the room to present ourselves.)
This is not a great dance musical, although the show seems to know it and at one point has King Arthur and others appear to tap dance from the waist up while their legs hardly move. It’s a startlingly clever effect.
While set in a semi-mythical English past, the current Spamalot is filled with contemporary references and shoutouts to other musicals (I counted three Sondheim references). It’s just really funny, so if you don’t bring that oxygen you may want to bring a scalpel because it just may leave you in stitches.
NOTE: Sign up here for The Broadway Maven’s Sunday, February 18 class on Spamalot. The homework is here.
DISCOUNT: The price for Sondheim Academy, which starts Tuesday, has been slashed by $5 to $44 for four classes. And Sunday’s A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum is, of course, still FREE, with the rest of Funny Broadway costing a modest $9 per class (The Producers, Spamalot, and The Book of Mormon).
BROADWAY MAVEN YouTube GEM: Chita Rivera’s passing this week touched the hearts of her many Broadway fans, especially dancers and people of Hispanic heritage. Here are some clips, news reports, and interviews that serve as a tribute to her life and work.
Fans are invited to share memories of the great Chita Rivera in the comments below.
BROADWAY BLAST: In Pippin, the title character sings of trying to find his “Corner of the Sky.” But guess what? Skies don’t have corners. They have broad, open spaces, and horizons – but no corners. So from the very start (well, the second song) we know that Pippin’s quest is chimerical, and that he’ll need more modest ambitions to be truly happy. Note the structure of the show: Pippin is an inverted pyramid, starting with the grand themes of “Magic to Do” and “Corner of the Sky” and narrowing into numbers like “Love Song” that celebrate intimacy. Pippin’s “corner” turns out not to be “where his spirit can run free.” Instead, it is most definitely on the ground.
PIANO TALK: In this week’s “Piano Talk,” music educator Mateo Chavez Lewis explores Barry Manilow’s clever techniques with major and minor keys, octaves, and other aspects of music theory in the song “Every Single Day” from Manilow’s very Jewish show Harmony. Unfortunately, Harmony never really found an audience. Its last performance will be this Sunday.
GAME: Here are four anagrams, all related to the same popular Broadway musical. Each anagram is at least somewhat connected with the word or phrase it represents when unscrambled. What are the phrases, and what’s the musical?
• ATONAL HARLEM, NIXED
• ALUMNI MAINLANDER
• URBAN ROAR
• CHARGED HID TERROR RATES
Here’s Gail Leondar-Wright on the (newly discounted) Sondheim Academy:
Note: links to register for ALL classes are always available at TheBroadwayMaven.com.
• Sunday, February 4 Noon and 7 pm ET: “Funny Broadway”: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (FREE)
• Tuesday, February 6 Noon ET: “Sondheim Academy”: “Sondheim’s Identities: Jewish and Gay” ($44 for the series)
• Sunday, February 11 Noon and 7 pm ET: “Funny Broadway”: The Producers ($9)
• Tuesday, February 13 Noon ET: “Sondheim Academy”: West Side Story ($44 for the series)
• Sunday, February 18 Noon and 7 pm ET: “Funny Broadway”: Spamalot ($9)
• Tuesday, February 20 Noon ET: “Sondheim Academy”: “Sondheim’s Women” ($44 for the series)
• Sunday, February 25 Noon and 7 pm ET: “Funny Broadway”: The Book of Mormon ($9)
• Tuesday, February 27 Noon ET: “Sondheim Academy”: “Sondheim’s Nations: Assassins and Pacific Overtures” ($44 for the series)
• Monday, April 1 Noon ET: A Strange Loop with Pulitzer Prizewinner Michael R. Jackson (just announced!). FREE (registration coming soon)
LAST BLAST: Perhaps Sondheim’s most brilliant rhyme ever comes in West Side Story: “I like the island Manhattan; smoke on your pipe and put that in!” Anita thus disputes her friends who prefer their previous Puerto Rican home. But with the wordplay it’s easy to miss why the lyric uses the somewhat awkward formula “the island Manhattan.” It’s not just because Anita is an immigrant (her English is pretty good anyway). It’s because both Puerto Rico and Manhattan are islands, and the latter is the one she chooses.
SOLUTION TO ANAGRAMS: The show is Hamilton. The terms unscrambled form the phrases Alexander Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Aaron Burr, and Richard Rodgers Theatre.
Broadway Maven David Benkof helps students further their appreciation of musical theater through his classes, his YouTube channel, and MARQUEE, his Weekly Blast. Contact him at DavidBenkof@gmail.com.
I look forward to this every week. I have discovered new shows I've gone on to see just because Marque made me aware of and appreciate them. Thanks, David!