Grab your coconut shells and grip those invisible reins tight, because it’s time to canter proudly into a new era of Spamalot on Broadway. It is, in fact, not dead yet. It feels fine. It thinks it will go for a walk.
The all-singing, all-dancing, all-silly musical extravaganza based on the classic comedy Monty Python and the Holy Grail originally graced the Great White Way in 2005, and a new star-studded revival is set to open on November 16, with preview performances starting October 31. Vanity Fair has your exclusive first look at the cast, which includes Ethan Slater, Michael Urie, Taran Killam, James Monroe Iglehart, Christopher Fitzgerald, Leslie Rodriguez Kritzer, Jimmy Smagula, and Nik Walker, chain mail and all.
Nik Walker & Taran Killam.By Matthew Murphy.
And about that chain mail—Slater, who earned a Tony nomination for his work as the lead in SpongeBob SquarePants: The Broadway Musical (though you may know his name from something else), told VF via email that while the armor has fewer corners than those cubic pants of legend, it’s not necessarily more comfortable.
“Both chafe, but in different places,” he confided.
Fresh off of filming the two-part film adaptation of Wicked, Slater called the Monty Python oeuvre “the holy grail of comedy for me as a kid.” (Yes, we see what he did there.) “I remember yelling, ‘It’s just a flesh wound’ and ‘Who are you who are so wise in the ways of science’ running through the hallways of elementary school.” He plays the Historian, something of a narrator for the show, as well as Prince Herbert.
Leslie Rodriguez Kritzer & Michael Urie.By Matthew Murphy.