Spamalot Speeds Transatlantic Crossover???

London producers and theatre owners have already been flocking to New York to check out Spamalot, the new musical based on Monty Python’s 1975 film Holy Grail which opened on Broadway last Thursday, 17 March 2005. Even before the reviews came out on Friday morning, the show had a staggering box office advance $18 million; by noon on Friday, it had added another cool million to that, and the sales kept mounting exponentially from there. You can see why industry bods here are keen to bring over the hit, which of course, needs no anglicising to appeal to British audiences. The musical is the brainchild of Eric Idle, who was joined by all the other former Pythons for Thursday’s New York opening. All the live ones - John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones, Michael Palin and Idle – took to the stage for the curtain call with their deceased fellow, Graham Chapman, represented with an urn of ashes and a cardboard cut-out of his face. In the US, the musical, directed by Mike Nichols, stars Briton Tim Curry as well as David Hyde Pierce (from TV’s Frasier) and Hank Azaria (who made his West End debut in Sexual Perversity in Chicago).

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