Monty Python’s ‘Spamalot’ @ Bass Performance Hall
Photos by Michael Murphy and Evan Zimmerman
Welcome home, Major Attaway!
—Jan Farrington
As we waited for the fun to start, I saw the ghostly outline of a long-eared rabbit behind the scrim that served as curtain for the stage. It was definitely staring at me. And sitting in Bass Performance Hall, waiting for Monty Python’s Spamalot, I thought: “I’ll bet that rabbit has a mean streak a mile wide.”
Everyone who’s ever learned a Monty Python comedy skit by heart—and there must be gazillions of us—knows that the bubble of laughter inside us never goes flat. I heard it fizzing and popping on opening night for this stop of a national touring company: folks old and young having the greatest time—listening and laughing (and nudging the person next to them—to lines they must have heard forever…and still found fresh, funny, and eternally weird.
With this run (April 28-May 3), Fort Worth welcomes Broadway divo Major Attaway (Aladdin’s arguably best Genie ever on Broadway) back to his home town as King Arthur, and the company he brought with him is way talented—plus energetic enough to go the distance with the non-stop bundle of wackiness that is Spamalot.
With music, lyrics and book by Python’s Eric Idle (and first-class help from composer John DuPrez), this is the tale of King Arthur and his faithful companion Patsy (whose coconuts are the most vital prop of the show), plus Knights (both “of the Round Table” and “who say Ni”), Tim the Enchanter, Not-Dead Fred, The French Taunter, Brave Sir Robin, The Lady of the Lake, and many more. Not to mention (but I will) the Trojan Bunny, a holy hand grenade, God Almighty, and a troupe of “Laker Girls” to make any crossover b-ball fans (Python + LA Lakers, really?) happy.
“Skip a bit, brother,” was not the style of the script.
The touring company (presented by Performing Arts Fort Worth) is directed and choreographed by Josh Rhodes, who led the Broadway revival that opened in 2023. His double role gives the show untiring energy and great pacing: comedy bits slide into dance numbers and back again, and the dancing is a medieval-meets-Broadway mashup with plenty of theater razmatazz, allusions to other hits, and even jokes a Barbra Streisand rushing around the stage. Spamalot, much more so that the original Python film (Monty Python and the Holy Grail, 2005) is less about quests for questionable religious cups (the Grail) and more about the joy and silliness of making theatre (in particular, musical theatre).
Music director/conductor Jonathan W. Gorst is in the pit with keyboards and drums (brought along with the tour), and a band of local musicians to fill things out. The mix works well, and the players come in for a moment of two of comic attention from the actors onstage. So does the audience (especially one surprised person toward the end), who guffaw at the cast breaking out in an iconic Texas song or a local commercial jingle—and squeezing in other bits that show someone’s been exploring the Fort. Y’all come back anytime, hear?
Designer Jen Caprio’s costumes (and Tom Watson’s wigs/hair) come and go in amazing variety, from peasants to knights to showgirls—and one nearly nekkid puppeteer who seems to have almost lost his outfit.
Some standouts among many:
Amanda Robles steals the singing part of the show with her crazy-Lady diva style, warbling up and down the scale (and ending in a note I’d like to call “high Z”) in songs such as “Find Your Grail” and “Diva’s Lament”)— all to pull maximum “oohs” from the audience. I’m sure Robles can (and does) sing opera straight…but why bother when she can do this? …
Major Attaway’s Arthur makes a charmingly funny straight man for the chaos around the King, and he’s beautifully fluid and light on his feet in the dance sequences. Love his strong, deep-diving voice, too. Unlike the movie’s King Arthur, who said Camelot was “a silly place” and zigged away to other adventures, this one let’s the show go there—and seems to embrace the Broadway vibe, grinning at us as he joins dance lines full of knights and showgirls in this very-Vegas version of the castle. (Shout-out to scenic designer Paul Tate DePoo III’s inventiveness with Camelot, the “very expensive forest” and all the Python-esque backdrops and projections, and kudos as well to all the people it must have involved.)
Brave Brave Sir Robin (Sean Bell) has a lovely big-range voice, and both he and the pining Prince Herbert (Steve Telsey, likewise tuneful, who also plays the show’s nerdy narrator) flip their bobbed hair…a lot. … On opening night, L’Ogan Jones (subbing for Blake Sega) kept us watching the King’s oppressed, under-appreciated sidekick Patsy (he of the coconut horses) … Leo Roberts pops up as peasant Dennis, the hunky Sir Galahad he somehow (enchantment?) becomes—plus Prince Herbert’s father, a perpetually raging homophobe who does need a hit in the head … And Chris Collins-Pisano pulls off four roles as the stabby knight Sir Lancelot, the hilarious French Taunter (lucky he’s way up there on the battlements), and two uber-tall characters, the Knight of Ni and Tim the Enchanter.
So take a tip from the Python crew. Don’t grump that “this is such a short run!” Instead, “Look on the Bright Side of Life” and tell yourself: I have five whole days to buy a ticket for Monty Python’s Spamalot. There’s even a digital lottery for the next night’s performance.
Go for it, people of the Fort…and Beyond.
WHEN: April 28-May 3, 2026
WHERE: Bass Performance Hall, downtown Fort Worth
WEB: bassperformancehall.com
