Blogoland

Pretty entertaining article in The New Yorker on Spamalot, the musical adaptation of The Holy Grail. Apparently, the Knights who say "Ni!" still crack up Eric Idle and Mike Nichols, the director, but not others in the cast:

While the principals read their lines, they laughed at each other, and they laughed at the readings of the actors with secondary parts, and Idle and Nichols laughed at everyone, even though they’d heard most of the lines many, many times. When the knights were faced with the peril of the Knights Who Say Ni!, suddenly “Ni!”s were coming from all over the room, and it became evident that Idle himself was providing some of the stabbing, high-pitched “Ni!”s. As Nichols, seventy-four, sat next to him, red-faced from laughing, Idle, sixty-one, was almost out of his seat, yelling “Ni! Ni!Ni!”

Meanwhile, though, a handful of the dancers were not laughing. They had scripts on their laps and were reading along, but they did not laugh once in the forty minutes of Act II. While most of the room was breaking up, these dancers read along with confused, frozen smiles. They either weren’t listening, were too tired, or weren’t getting it.

Not sure if I'm going to shell out the cash to see this, but I guess it could be interesting. Another tidbit: The producers considered using a midget to play the Black-Night-flesh-wound bit, but they realized that would be too expensive. No word on what the solution was, though. Dave "Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" Eggers wrote the article