TheatreReviewHarold Pinter theatre, LondonArthur's Round Table has never looked so square. Spamalot, the 2005 musical adapted by Eric Idle and John Du Prez from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, is back in the West End in what is claimed to be a new and improved version directed by Christopher Luscombe. What this means is that it is served with effortful, topical garnish: Boris Johnson, Jedward and Susan Boyle are briefly impersonated, and there are frequent nods to the Olympics. At one point, Arthur cries: "Can you get me Kenneth Branagh, 600 dancing nurses and Danny Boyle's phone number?"
Monty Python's genius is not easy to reproduce (and though Idle puts in an appearance as a foul-mouthed God, it's via a big video screen on stage), and this dangerously safe show reveals that resting on old laurels does not work. The shabby, cardboard-cut-out set and knights in tawdry red-and-yellow shifts are a long way from Terry Gilliam's inventive animations, for which Python is famed.
Marcus Brigstocke – a sharp comedian in his own right – plays Arthur. New to the part, he has a faintly Cleesian presence and looks as if he is humouring the material with the fixed smile (and frown) of someone minding a tedious child. He wears designer specs beneath his crown, but needs to visit an optician as they keep sliding down his nose, owing to all that cantering he has to do with Patsy (long-suffering Todd Carty, banging on coconut shells for hooves). At least the coconuts are an improvement on the old chestnuts on display elsewhere in the show.
The cast does its best: Bonnie Langford shows professional staying power as Lady of the Lake, Rob Delaney's Sir Robin has projection, and talented Adam Ellis entertains as the plague victim who is, he insistently says, "not dead yet". If only the same could be said of the musical.
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