By David Burke
Eric Idle’s “Greedy Ba$tard Tour,” which set down at the RiverCenter Adler Theatre on Sunday night, was the closest the 21st century may ever get to a traveling vaudeville show.
A politically incorrect, filthy-language-laden and, yes, greedy vaudeville show, but a vaudeville show nonetheless.
In front of an audience of about 1,000, the Monty Python veteran reminisced about his days with the British comedy troupe, his own life and current events in a two-hour-plus show.
Comedy and music flowed at a steady pace thanks not only to Idle, but to supporting players Peter Crabbe and Jennifer Julian. They brought back such chestnuts from the Monty pantheon as “Wink, Wink, Nudge, Nudge,” “I Like Chinese” and “The Lumberjack Song.”
Idle — many of whose remarks cannot be repeated in a family newspaper — entered the stage to the classic Python tune of “Spam,” and immediately regretted that the term had gone from processed meat to junk
e-mail, and made a connection between the three most popular e-mail spam: lengthening a certain organ, Viagra and mortgage financing.
“I’m doing this to get my daughter through college and my wife through collagen,” Idle said.
He also trotted out new material, including the results of don’t ask, don’t tell — an all-gay army he dubbed “Queer Eye for the Straight G.I.”
Idle also reminisced about his friend George Harrison — who only wanted to talk about Idle’s parody band, the Rutles — and performed sketches from Python predecessor Beyond the Fringe and “The Four Yorkshiremen,” a one-upsmanship misery tale that came not from Python, but the followup “At Last, the 1948 Show.”
The most unexpected surprise came from Crabbe, in a rant about homeland security. The burly, bald and goateed performer looked very Matrix in dark glasses and a leather duster, mercilessly skewering the Quad-Cities for about five minutes, saying the cities besides Davenport, Rock Island and Moline could just be called … well, let’s just say probably the most obscene combination of two four-letter words.
Crabbe apparently did his homework. Although Silvis was used a punchline earlier, this was not a monologue someone landing in town a few hours earlier could have given:
On the I-74 bridges: “I don’t know why the people in Illinois want the people from Iowa out, and vice versa.”
On Arsenal Island: “Whose idea was it to say, ‘Let’s build four cities around an explosives factory.’ ”
Idle said there wouldn’t be a Python reunion (“We’ve discovered the less we do, the more you pay”), but did say “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” would be resurrected next year for a Broadway musical called “Spamalot.”
An “encore bucket,” a metal garbage can placed on the edge of the stage, netted extra audience money — for charity — and guaranteed that “The Lumberjack Song” would be played after “The Life of Brian” finale, “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.”
Idle called it “comedy lap dancing,” but the audience didn’t mind shelling out a few extra bucks.
