So what happens in Act Two? More of the same, which is fine. But that magical momentum Nichols and Idle found for forty-odd minutes has gone. Perhaps the intermission helps to dissipate that, during which you observe everyone showing off their new Spamalot toys from the concession stand. (A cow-hurtling slingshot can't be gotten at just any show, after all.) Highlights follow, to be sure: David Hyde-Pierce pulls off Idle's provocative patter song "You Won't Succeed on Broadway (if you don't have any Jews)" in perfect Noel Coward/Rex Harrison throwaway style, until he is upstaged by one of Nicholaw's most outrageous coups: a line of hassidim knights donning holy grails on their heads while executing the famous shtetl steps from the opening of Fiddler. If nothing else, such a gleefully bizarre "overdetermined" sights are rare enough on Broadway to justify a visit.) But toward the end you do sense the team running out of ideas of how to keep the show fresh, especially when they resort to audience participation at the end.

The pleasures of Spamalot are thoroughly forgettable a few days later, while some people (no names) can quote the lines from the movie ceaselessly for years on end. What does that say?
Earlier, I speculated that there will be no future life for a clever parody song like "The Song That Goes Like This." I should revise that prediction now that I've seen (and heard) just how hilarious the song is ("Now we change the key/ We're moving up to 'G'/ We should have stayed in 'D'")--but still this is aided by the perfectly neat context Nichols's production has put it in. A New Yorker sneak-peak article a while back quoted Nichols at a production meeting saying something like "Well of course we have to end with confetti."And so they do. And--y'know?--it works. After so much drek, it is fun to feel yourself in the hands of a master entertainer.

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