During my second weekend in Vegas, I saw three shows: "Ka" at the MGM Grand and "Mystere" at the Treasure Island, both from the mega-theater-circus company Cirque du Soleil, and "Spamalot" at the Wynn.
I'll first comment on "Spamalot" and leave the others for another post. When I first saw "Spamalot" on Broadway, I had high expectations, since I loved the original movie on which it's based ("Monty Python and the Holy Grail") and loved the people involved in the stage version, namely the co-writer Eric Idle, the actors Hank Azaria and David Hyde Pierce, and the director Mike Nichols. I end up having a great time but I didn't laugh as much as I thought I would. I enjoyed recognizing the sketches I knew so well from the film, and especially enjoyed how the crowd collectively recognized them by whopping and cheering. But actually seeing the sketch that I knew so well — even though it was actors in the flesh onstage — wasn't so thrilling.
I enjoyed how in some places, the stage version did manage to add its own extra theatrical take on the material that fit with the Python sense of humor, such as the addition of the song "Not Yet Dead" to the "Bring out your dead" sketch from the film, and little bits such as in the middle of a song when someone rolls a wagon of hay across the stage and the cast yells "Hey!" Other additions don't seem to fit as well. The Broadway satire — such as "The Song That Goes Like This" and "You Won't Succeed on Broadway" — felt less Python and more Mel Brooks.
In Vegas, I didn't have the same high expectations, which is perhaps why I think I laughed more per hour than I did at the Broadway version. Like the Cirque shows, "Spamalot," runs only an hour and a half without intermission — down from about two hours, fifteen minutes on Broadway. At first glance, the only parts I could tell were missing from the Vegas version were the amusing song "All for One" that the knights sing early on, and the sketch with the two guards guarding the effeminate Prince Herbert. I didn't much miss whatever is missing, though I would happily have sat for 45 minutes longer and seen more.
The cast, as expected, doesn't the nail the comedy as well as the Broadway cast did, though John O'Hurley (J. Peterman on "Seinfeld") is genius casting as King Arthur, and I hadn't heard of Nikki Crawford but she executed The Lady of the Lake role almost perfectly. More interesting is how some parts of the show work better in Vegas than they do on Broadway and others to work not as well, simply because of the city in which the theater is located. The "Knights of the Round Table" song resonates better in Vegas simply because it satirizes Vegas itself. The audience participation at the end of the show perfectly fits the Vegas sensibility. But the song "You Won't Succeed on Broadway" — as in the lyric "You won't succeed on Broadway if you don't have any Jews" — felt very out of place. How many Jews are in the audience? How many audience members even know any Jews? Even if there were people who would understand why this song was funny, I was nervous that many of them wouldn't. At one point in the show, a throwaway reference to "Another Hundred People" that got no laughs in Vegas (and big laughs on Broadway) could easily have been cut. Most of the audience didn't seem to recognize The Lady of the Lake's Liza Minnelli impression, the reason — or result — being that Crawford didn't quite dive into it head first the way Sara Ramirez did on Broadway.
One interesting source of appeal was that in this city of kitsch and superficiality and false facades, a city that felt so foreign, it was nice to see people appreciating theater, and the same theater I appreciated back in New York. I don't mean this to come across as a snotty, prosthelytizing, "everyone should love theater since it's real and everything else is superficial" point of view. I think it's more that in this strange, foreign city, it's comforting to see people who enjoy this same little niche part of the entertainment world that I do -- similar to the feeling I get when I see people going to the theater in L.A.
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Posted by: Rowman | Tuesday, December 18, 2012 at 05:18 PM