Jeremy Daniel
Spamalot, first seen on Broadway in 2005, is back—and the good news is the really good silly bits of this parody of Arthurian legend are just as good-silly as they always were. But the bits that felt dated have only become more dated; one a song about Jews running Broadway at this moment sounds not just dated but also weird in this politically vexed moment (especially with a huge, glittering Star of David), the other is a rousing hymn to gay pride for Sir Lancelot (Taran Killam), which is discordantly beamed in from another era.
Both aren’t intended as offensive, yet you may end up experiencing them with a grimace at the cringe-stereotypes paraded in their composition. Some of our audience laughed, many did not. But, as this a musical—score by John Du Prez and Eric Idle, with lyrics and book by Idle—filled gleefully and sometimes very wittily with stereotypes (particularly when it comes to the French), even one’s cringe becomes compromised with Spamalot. It’s its own dumb joke rollercoaster—everything and everyone is up for ribbing.
The revival that opened on Broadway tonight (St. James Theatre, booking through April 28, 2024) has even inserted a few pop-culture-topical references—to Ozempic and to Ariana DeBose’s “Angela Bassett did the thing,” for example.