Las Vegas Weekly

July 11, 2008 · 12 PM

Behind-the-scenes secrets as Spamalot draws to a close

By Robin Leach

To many Spamalot fans, John O'Hurley will always be King Arthur.

Photo: Wynn Las Vegas

And now for something completely different! But unfortunately probably the last time on the Strip! On Sunday evening the curtain comes down on Monty Python’s Spamalot at Wynn Las Vegas, and star John O’Hurley gets ready to take his King Arthur role on the road with tour of major West Coast cities. It doesn’t look as if he will be singing, “Look on the Bright Side” anytime soon on the Strip. Sunday’s finale won’t be very much different than the previous performances that originally began with its March 31, 2007 premiere -- except there’s a good chance that creator Eric Idle will fly in as the cast has a “farewell and au-revoir” speech at the final curtain. Spamalot has been honored with numerous awards, including three Tony Awards -– one for Best Musical -- and a Grammy Award for Best Original Cast recording.

You know I love the Fun Facts of everything that goes on with a Broadway musical that makes it to the Strip, so I’ll share with you the last set of Spamalot stats:

-- Every night 6 pounds of confetti have been shot over the audiences. It took 2 technicians to pull the 45-pound cow over a wall after two actors threw it skyward.

-- There were 26 hanging set changes backstage, of which 12 were automated by computer moves.

-- The cast of 26 onstage was supported by 80 others in the crew and orchestra.

-- Some 120 actual coconuts were shipped in from Florida and used for the sound affects of galloping horses during the run to replace the broken, dead, not moving, etc. etc., per the Dead Parrot sketch. The cast even created a coconut-hanging graveyard for backstage visitors to walk under. The Vegas troupe never managed to catch up to the Australian production of Spamalot which still holds the Guinness record for The World’s Largest Coconut Orchestra, with 10,000 people easily beating out New York’s 1800 and London’s 5,800 coconut cloppers.

Did you know that the original 1975 Python movie about the Knights of the Round Table was made for just $400,000 -- financed partly by former Beatle George Harrison and shot in and around historic Scottish castles in just five weeks? The sets for the show at Wynn, by comparison, cost $10 million to build! The film was structured to lose money so then 80 percent tax levies on the wealthy could be avoided in creative tax-loss investments. However, the film was named the Best British Picture of All Time and the scheme backfired!

My friend John told me that he’s had the time of his life in the role of King Arthur and has enjoyed living in Vegas and enjoying his time at the various Wynn restaurants. “Spamalot has been the best musical experience of my life,” he said. “So much so that I can’t leave the role of King Arthur alone and I’m now looking forward to our West Coast runs in San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego. They are all close enough to get back every week to our Hollywood home so that makes it an added bonus, but I will definitely miss all the good times we had in Vegas. We’ll be back -- I promise.”

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