No Naughty Bits
From: Thursday, 8th September 2011
To: Saturday, 15 October 2011
Our Review: 
Your Reviews:
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Synopsis
As a series of Monty Python airs on American Network television for the first time, it emerges that all the naughty bits have been cut. Terry Gilliam and Michael Palin take on the networks and the American courts, as they try to explain English humour and keep the rude bits in.
Our Review:
Michael Coveney - 14 September 2011
Steve Thompson’s new play takes the real life hoo-ha surrounding the broadcast of Monty Python’s Flying Circus on nationwide television in America in 1975 and fashions a snappy, entertaining comedy about censorship and the sense of humour problem in two nations divided, as Shaw said, by a common language.
Two of the Python team, Michael Palin and Terry Gilliam, go to court over changes made to their script, though a lawyer argues that cutting out bits of the video does not amount to the same thing.
They don’t worry too much about the Jimmy Hill as Queen Victoria sketch; but they do resent the excision of bums and boners and sexual self-pleasuring. “People in Idaho will watch this,” says the ABC network; “People in Idaho don’t have genitals?”
The rhythm of that exchange is a good example of how Thompson understands how comedy works. But where Edward Hall’s production takes of...
Latest User Review
Steve - 15 October 2011:
Harry Hadden-Paton does indeed seem to be playing Gyles Brandreth, rather than Michael Palin, as he doesn't capture Palin's innate introversion, though he does capture his befuddled sense of decency. Sam Alexander is an excellent Gilliam, brash and funny. Charity Wakefield does a very creditable American accent as Monty Python's PR point person. However, this play is not very funny, and tellingly only gets real laughs when the players reenact a Python sketch. Neither is the play particularly dramatic, the tension never hitting fever pitch. Therefore, the play's main USP is what it tells us about the cultural gulf between the US and the UK, and that never amounts to much more than informing us that people in Peoria are prudish and patriotic....
Cast
Sam Alexander
John Guerrasio
Harry Hadden-Paton
Joseph May
Issy Van Randwyck
Clive Rowe
Charity Wakefield
Matthew Marsh
Creative
Steve Thompson (Author)
Hampstead Theatre (Producer)
Edward Hall (Director)
Francis O'Connor (Design)
Matt McKenzie (Sound)
Rish Fisher (Lighting)
Simon Slater (Music)
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