MONTY PYTHON'S SPAMALOT to Play The State Theatre, 2/10

Winner of the 2005 Tony Award for Best Musical, Monty Python's Spamalot is the outrageous new musical comedy lovingly ripped off from the film classic "Monty Python and The Holy Grail." Based on the Tony Award winning direction of Mike Nichols, with a book by Eric Idle and music and lyrics by the Grammy Award-winning team of Mr. Idle and John Du Prez, Spamalot tells the tale of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table as they embark on their quest for the Holy Grail. Flying cows, killer rabbits, taunting Frenchmen and show-stopping musical numbers are just a few of the reasons audiences everywhere are eating up Spamalot.

Show times are Sunday, February 10 at 2 & 7 PM. Tickets are $60 & $55 and can be purchased by visiting the State Theatre Box Office, 453 Northampton Street, Easton, by calling 1-800-999-STATE, 610-252-3132 or online at www.statetheatre.org.

As one of life's great pleasure both men and women have enjoyed Monty Python for decades: usually together, sometimes individually or even quite often in group or same sex situations. So quite rightly you may say: What can you tell me that I don't already know?

Well, thanks to this shabbily concocted collection of silly pictures and inaccurate information lifted wholesale from Wikipedia and other equally unreliable sources, reproduced here in glorious polychromy we intend to give you a deep insight into Monty Python.

Neither man nor beast Monty Python was in fact a very famous comedy troupe made up of six British comics that in the late 1960's and early 1970's had a very popular TV show called Monty Python's Flying Circus. They were John Cleese, Michael Palin, Graham Chapman, Terry Jones, Terry Gilliam and Eric Idle.

Anyway, the show, which was broadcast on BBC in Britain and PBS in the States, consisted of comedy sketches, very much like Mad TV or Saturday Night Live is today. The show was hugely popular and Monty Python enjoyed major celebrity status. In fact Monty Python became so popular that they began to create joke filled books, games, movies and even soft furnishings.

In Monty Python and the Holy Grail, they turned their hands to a Mock Arthurian legend. The film depicts how King Arthur gathered together his Knights of the Round Table and set off on a quest to find the Holy Grail. In many of their films, Monty Python lampooned historical figures, world famous events and almost every movie genre including epics, horror films, and historical dramas and Busby Berkeley musicals. In fact it was this constant reference to the movie musical that in 2003 got Eric Idle thinking about adapting Monty Python and the Holy Grail into a musical.

Spamalot is not exactly like the film. For example it doesn't come in a metal canister but it does feature many of the same characters and the same sense of Python humour.

For more information, visit www.montypythonsspamalot.com.