Preview: Monty Python’s ‘Spamalot’ Tour Brings Rollicking Comedy to Hollywood on March 24th

Long before Broadway embraced coconuts, killer rabbits, or the Knights Who Say “Ni,” Monty Python had already perfected a brand of comedy built on joyful impertinence and glorious nonsense. Spamalot, the Tony Award-winning musical lovingly ripped from the cult film Monty Python and the Holy Grail, brings that anarchic spirit to Southern California this season as the North American tour charmingly peregrinates into town.

The tour, which just concluded a brief run at Costa Mesa’s Segerstrom Center for the Arts on Sunday, February 22nd, will soon gallop en route to the Hollywood Pantages Theatre from March 24th through April 12th. Fresh off its acclaimed 2023 revival at the St. James Theatre in New York, this touring production retains much of what made that return such a hit: buoyant energy, playful theatricality, and an understanding that the show’s comedy works best when it feels both gleefully frivolous and smartly self-aware.

Originally opening on Broadway in 2005, Spamalot features a book and lyrics by Eric Idle, with music by John Du Prez and Idle. The musical went on to earn fourteen Tony Award nominations and win three, including Best Musical. Rather than simply parodying medieval legend, it takes aim at the Great White Way itself, gleefully skewering everything from heroic epics to overblown production numbers. The result is a show that feels both familiar and delightfully unhinged, packed with sight gags, verbal absurdities, and songs that have long since embedded themselves into musical-theater lore.

The current tour is directed and choreographed by Josh Rhodes, whose staging emphasizes momentum and visual invention, keeping the humor sharp without sanding down its eccentric edges. Leading the cast is Major Attaway as King Arthur, joined by Sean Bell (Sir Robin), Chris Collins-Pisano (Sir Lancelot), Ellis C. Dawson III (Sir Bedevere), Leo Roberts (Sir Galahad), Blake Segal (Patsy), and Steven Telsey (Historian/Prince Herbert) in a parade of knights, narrators, and miscellaneous medieval oddities. Amanda Robles steps into the spotlight as the bountifully belting Lady of the Lake, anchoring the show’s musical high points with vocal bravura and jocose authority.

At its fun-loving core, Spamalot remains a celebration of silliness for its own sake where the happenings are both technically polished and merrily ridiculous. As the North American tour makes its upcoming stop at the Hollywood Pantages Theatre, audiences can expect an evening that courageously hurls itself unapologetically in myriad directions.

It all adds up as a reminder of Monty Python’s enduring voice where the spectacle is buttressed by a comic irreverence that ceaselessly tickles, especially when occasionally combined with improvisational banter, which will lift your spirits and make you forget any stressors weighing you down — at least during its two-hour-and-twenty-five-minute duration.

Cover image caption: Left to right are Sean Bell, Leo Roberts, Major Attaway, Blake Segal, Chris Collins-Pisano, and Ellis C. Dawson III in the North American tour of Spamalot. Photo is by Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman.

The North American tour of Spamalot will run at the Hollywood Pantages Theatre from Tuesday, March 24th through Sunday, April 12th. For further details and tickets to the show, visit broadwayinhollywood.com.