Phill Jupitus jumped at the chance to star in 'Spamalot', the Broadway tribute to Monty Python described by John Cleese as the silliest thing he has ever seen. By BRIAN BOYD
PHILL JUPITUS thinks it will be a wonderful irony if he dies during the current stage tour of Spamalot, the award-winning musical "lovingly ripped off" from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. And that's die, as in actually die, not just fail to deliver on stage.
“I really should die – it would be very appropriate,” he says. “My very first ‘performance’ was when I was eight years of age at school. Me and my mates would do Monty Python sketches. Now here I am, 40 years later, getting paid to do Monty Python sketches.”
Spamalotcomes to Dublin from Monday, and for Jupitus, who stars as King Arthur, it will be a problematic run.
“I’m going to have to stay off the turps [drink] when I’m in Dublin, as it’s a week of shows and it’s very demanding. I’ve been in Dublin a lot, either doing improv or hanging around the great Comedy Cellar, and I’ve never had a dry night there. I’ve drawn up a cunning plan, though, for places to go: I’ll be going around Trinity College and all of that instead of holding court in the International Bar.”
Jupitus answered the call to do Spamalotimmediately. "What the Goons were to my father's generation, and the Mighty Boosh are now to my daughter's generation, Python were to my generation," he says. "And The Holy Grailis not just the best Python film – it's one of the best comic films of all time. I remember going to see it on the day it came out, when I was just 15. Spamalotreally is a tribute to it.
“You’ve got King Arthur, the witch burnings, killer rabbits and French people. And it’s a proper adult pantomime – it has all the silliness of a panto – without topless ladies running around.”
The show has been touring steadily around the UK for the past few months, and Jupitus finds the make-up of the audience surprising. "You only get a few hard-core Python fans in: you immediately know them because of the things they shout out. But the majority of people have never seen The Holy Grailbefore, and that's the best thing about how Spamalotis structured: you don't need any prior knowledge of the film to enjoy and understand it. But if you have seen the film it can enhance the musical for you."
Eric Idle wrote the book and lyrics for the musical. He took its name from a line in the 1975 film: “We eat ham and jam and Spam a lot.” The original Broadway production premiered in 2005 and was a surprise success. This very English comedy received 14 Tony Award nominations and was seen by more than two million people. It has since travelled around the world, breaking box-office records as it goes.
But not all of the Pythons are fans of the musical. Terry Gilliam has referred to it as “Python lite” while Terry Jones said, “It’s utterly pointless: regurgitating Python is not high on my list of priorities.” John Cleese and Michael Palin, at first sceptical and suspicious, have come around to begrudgingly praising the show.
"I think a lot of the Pythons are being tongue-in-cheek in how they view it," says Jupitus. "What really happened is that Eric Idle was pressing all of them to do Spamalotas a Python venture, but when he couldn't pin all of them down he just went ahead and did it himself. All of them had to give permission, so they can't dislike it that much. Plus it makes a fortune for all of them. I think the confusion is when John Cleese says, for example, that Spamalotis the silliest thing he's ever seen: you can take that either way. I think it could be a bit of an in-joke among the Pythons about coming out and slagging it off. It's like John Cleese at Graham Chapman's funeral saying, 'I didn't care for the man.' "
Jupitus, who is 48, got his break when Billy Bragg saw his performance-poetry act in the early 1980s and invited him on tour with him. Chucking in his civil-service job, he variously worked as Bragg's roadie, a press officer for The Housemartins and for The La's, a stand-up comedian, an actor, an author and a playwright. He's best known, though, for his long-running role as team captain on Never Mind the Buzzcocks.
The switch from stand-up to musical theatre was slow. "I would meet up with actors when I was touring around, and we always had this thing where we would both be going, 'No, your job is harder than mine,' all the time, and I always quite fancied doing theatre, but it wasn't until I got offered a role in the West End run of Hairspraythat I really fell for it – and found it such a totally different experience from the solo stand-up world."
"I suppose, like a lot of people, and before I did Hairspray, I thought musicals were something your auntie went to. But I really believe that in the current climate musical theatre is the best-value ticket you can get. You're not just getting a four-piece band; you're getting much more than that. And we really try to localise the show wherever we bring it.
“First of all, it was originally written with spaces for improvisation built into it, so there are changes every night, and it’s a sort of tradition now that we do put in some local information about wherever we’re playing. But really it’s the utter silliness of it all that gets us through.”
Jupitus has no idea what will he do after this run of Spamalotfinishes. He has, he says, a reactive rather than a proactive attitude to his career.
"Getting into musicals was strange, but they came looking for me as opposed to me going looking for them," he says. "I remember years ago touring around with Eddie Izzard, and he always had what he called his five-year plan – he wanted to be doing certain things by certain times. That just would never work for me. I remember at the height of Buzzcockson TV I was on the Equity minimum wage, because I was asked to do a play about a life coach in a small theatre in London.
"You see something like Guys and Dollsand you think, I'd love to be in that, but the only two questions I ever ask myself whenever I'm offered anything is: 'Will it be a laugh?' and, 'Have I done it before?' If both questions come back 'no', I'll do it."
Spamalotis at Grand Canal Theatre, Dublin, from Monday to Saturday; grandcanaltheatre.ie
