Spamalot

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https://www.drewanthonycreative.com.au/

Date Reviewed: 17/09/2026

Python’s SPAMALOT proves that, beneath the killer rabbits, Knights Who Say Ni and suspiciously important shrubbery, sometimes we simply need to laugh.

Meeting Stephen Curry, Jaz Flowers and producer/director Drew Anthony offered three different perspectives on the musical, but one thought kept returning: SPAMALOT may revel in nonsense, yet there is something timely about giving an audience permission to escape the real world for a couple of hours.

For Stephen Curry, stepping into King Arthur also means stepping into musical theatre for the first time.

Curry has spent decades making audiences laugh on screen, but his affection for Monty Python made SPAMALOT difficult to resist.

“I have always loved Monty Python,” he says. “They have formed a lot of what I feel is my sense of humour, just because of their generosity and their brilliance. Their legacy they’ve left is so indelible, so massive, and it’s such an honour. I couldn’t say no.”

King Arthur is ostensibly the straight man amid the escalating lunacy — although Curry quickly points out that “straight” is a relative term in the Python universe.

“He’s the stupidest straight man I’ve ever seen,” he laughs. “I’ve never seen a straight man in a comedy who can’t count to three.”

Curry only discovered relatively late in rehearsals that he was apparently meant to be the steady hand at the centre of proceedings.

“I didn’t get told I was the straight man until about a week ago! So, I may have thrown in a little bit too much physical comedy.”

There is room for his own comic instincts, but Curry is conscious that this is material audiences know and love.

“It’s really important to follow what’s on the page,” he says. “To respect text like this — it is written so specifically and so beautifully, and so many of the audience know the dialogue. So we don’t want to disappoint them.”

There is one scene, however, where maintaining composure is proving particularly difficult: the French Taunters.

“King Arthur and his knights are murderous. When they go out into battle, they kill a lot of people. There is bloodshed every time. But someone calls their mother a hamster, or they say their father smelt of elderberries, and they get horribly offended!”

For Curry, “the absurdity of that sums up the show, sums up Python”, and it is incredibly hard not to laugh.

If Curry is discovering musical theatre for the first time, Jaz Flowers is rediscovering it.

Flowers returns to the stage after a decade away to play the gloriously excessive Lady of the Lake. With a baby only four months old and a three-year-old at home, the timing had to be right.

“All the puzzle pieces had to fit together,” she says. “There’s a lot going on in my life right now.”

Fortunately, the Lady of the Lake proved difficult to resist.

“It is a magical role. She gets to just belt her face off and never want to leave the stage. I mean, who doesn’t want to do that every night?”

The role demands the vocals of a genuine musical-theatre diva while sending up everything a musical-theatre diva represents.

“Trying to sing as well as I can whilst — sorry — taking the piss at the same time, I must admit it is harder than I thought it was going to be to find that line.”

Flowers is determined to make the character her own.

“I try not to look too much at people who have played it before, because I don’t want to copy. I want to make it my own.”

Her return to eight-show-a-week musical theatre has also presented a more personal challenge. Pregnancy and a decade away from that demanding performance schedule have changed her relationship with her voice.

“My vocal cords aren’t exactly the way that they used to be and I’m still navigating the use of my voice,” she says.

Her Act Two number, “Whatever Happened to My Part?”, therefore carries an almost comically appropriate extra meaning.

“It is definitely the one that people are anticipating,” she says, “and it is the one that scares me the most.”

Yet the fear seems to fall away when Flowers talks about what SPAMALOT offers audiences.

“It is nonsense. It is silly. It is joyful,” she says.

“In a world that we live in right now that is so divided and negative and sad and scary at times, to have escapism for a couple of hours, to have a good time, whether you’re a Monty Python fan or not — if you don’t leave with a smile on your face, you know what? I will eat my hat.”

It is a sentiment echoed by Drew Anthony, for whom staging SPAMALOT fulfils a long-held ambition.

Anthony remembers being on Broadway for Tim Curry’s final performance as King Arthur, on the same night a close friend was beginning her run as the Lady of the Lake.

“Seeing his last night and her first night was just a real joy,” he recalls. “From that night, I think I just really always wanted to do that show.”

Anthony believes the show’s appeal extends well beyond those who can recite Monty Python and the Holy Grail word for word.

“As much as it is a celebration of all things Monty Python, it’s equally a celebration of musical theatre generally,” he says. “So, you don’t have to be a Python fan to really enjoy it.”

That balance extends to his staging. A large LED screen creates a surprising depth of scenery.

“People are astounded when they see it,” he says. “Oftentimes we have people commenting on our set and I say, ‘You mean the screen?’ And they go, ‘Oh, I didn’t even realise it was a screen.’”

Yet directing comedy, Anthony says, also means knowing when not to direct too much.

“My job was really just to say, ‘Yes, I like that. No, I don’t like that,’ and mould more than direct.”

Watching Curry encounter an audience for the first time reinforced the point.

“A comedian needs an audience,” Anthony says. “His performance lifted to a whole other level as soon as that audience walked in. What a joy.”

Perhaps that is the secret to why material with roots stretching back more than half a century can still work.

“We’re lucky because the humour of Monty Python is proving to be timeless,” Anthony says. “It’s absurd, it’s a little quirky, it’s unique, it’s bizarre.”

And perhaps absurdity is exactly what makes SPAMALOT feel unexpectedly appropriate right now.

Editorial/Interview by Naomi Lisner https://www.imdb.com/name/nm4541715/