SPAMALOT: LIGHTHEADED, LIGHTHEARTED FUN
8 / 10
Speaking of Act 2 showstoppers: There are a few—starting with the crowd-pleaser “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life,” the British music-hall ditty made famous in Monty Python’s Life of Brian. And perhaps most memorably, there’s “You Won’t Succeed on Broadway,” Sir Robin’s patter song explaining what every good Broadway musical needs: “There simply must be, Arthur, trust me/ Simply must be Jews.” It’s a massive production number incorporating a Fiddler on the Roof parody, a Streisand impersonator, and Michael Urie on a chair doing his best “Mein Herr,” and yes, it lands differently in November 2023. (There’s also, alas, a sound issue, which seems to be a St. James Theatre problem; the singers were getting drowned out during Into the Woods as well.) You can feel the audience asking themselves, Is it okay to laugh? Is the song offensive? For that matter, is it any more or less offensive than the disco-tastic number “His Name Is Lancelot,” which is basically one big gay stereotype wrapped in Lycra? No judgment here. But if you don’t chuckle over the lyric “There’s a very small percentile/ Who enjoys a dancing gentile,” I promise—I will judge you.
