Sunday, April 01, 2007
Paul Hodgins
THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
A few years ago, Eric Idle had a blinding flash of inspiration about his next career move: He would write a musical.
Of course, Idle is an alumnus of one of the funniest comedy teams that Western civilization has ever produced, Monty Python?s Flying Circus, so the material would have to be hilarious.
"I was playing Ko-Ko in a production of The Mikado, and I was really enjoying myself," said Idle, 63. "One night I thought, 'This is what I should do next!'".
Separately and together, Idle and his creative partner, composer John Du Prez, fiddled with ideas. But nothing presented itself as the ideal subject for a big-budget musical comedy.
This agonizing search leads to an obvious question: At what point did Idle look in the mirror, whack himself on the forehead and say, "Duh!"?
"Yes, yes. The Grail was under my nose the whole time." (Idle is referring, of course, to Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the 1975 film that rocketed the group to the comedic stratosphere in America.)
Artfully altered to give it a more-coherent storyline, outfitted with songs by Idle and Du Prez and directed by veteran Broadway hand Mike Nichols, the musical adaptation, called Monty Python's Spamalot, wowed audiences and charmed critics during its Chicago tryout and at its 2005 Broadway premiere.
It wasn't as if Idle had never entertained the possibility of turning Grail into a Broadway musical. But as a piece of communal property, the issue of adaptability was a tricky one.
The surviving members of Python (Graham Chapman, who played King Arthur in the film, died in 1989) all had a hand in the movie's creation, and it was co-directed by Python members Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam.
"I had to approach them collectively," Idle said. "The only way to do it was to show them how we might go about it. So I wrote a book and then we wrote some songs, recorded them, and sent them a CD.
"They just loved it. They all said, 'OK, this is fine. Off you go.'"
Idle wanted to expand on that base for the musical.
"The next step was to attract an audience that didn't know it. In order to be really successful, I knew I needed to reach that larger group."
To that end, Idle was determined to land the best talent he could for the debut production, and he did. Besides director Nichols, he snagged actors Hank Azaria, Tim Curry, and David Hyde Pierce.
"These are actors," he said, "whom a lot of people know and want to see."
Almost as important as pleasing critics and audiences was satisfying his former Python colleagues, Idle said. They seemed happy with the result.
"It's a crowd-pleaser is what it is," Gilliam told The Buffalo News after seeing the musical. "It's certainly put a bit of life into the old Python corpse."
