Broadway tour of "Spamalot" at the Ordway Center

I was fortunate enough to see the 2005 Tony-winning Best Musical Spamalot on Broadway, starring the likes of Tim Curry, David Hyde Pierce, Hank Azaria, Christian Borle, and Sara Ramirez, who won the Tony for her role and to this day is my gold standard for comedic singing. It was (unsurprisingly) my first introduction to the world of Monty Python, the British comedy troupe on whose work the musical is based. Eric Idle, one of the members, wrote the book and lyrics, working with frequent collaborator John Du Prez on the music. Despite having no prior knowledge of the material, I loved the show, and am still perplexed that (to my knowledge) there have been no local professional productions of it. The show has toured several times, and was revived on Broadway in 2023. That production is currently touring the US, and has stopped in St. Paul at the Ordway Center for one week only, before it's replaced by the return of the Queens of SIX, which actually played the Ordway before its Broadway debut, where it won two Tonys and is still playing. But first, you have only a short time to experience the joyful silliness of Spamalot, a fourth-wall breaking show that doesn't try to be anything other than it is - brilliantly stupid comedy. 

Broadway tour of "The Great Gatsby: A New Musical" at the Orpheum Theatre

A musical adaptation of the most well-known novel of one of Minneosta's favorite sons, F. Scott Fitzgerald, opened on Broadway two years ago and is still playing. The touring production of The Great Gatsby has landed in Fitzgerald's birthplace for one week only. Did this critically acclaimed classic novel need to be adapted into a musical? Probably not. Is this format, what is essentially a musical comedy for the first three-quarters of the show, the best way to tell this American tragedy, a brutal look at capitalism, classism, materialism, and the failure of the American dream? Definitely not. It doesn't really capture the essence of the novel (which just makes me want to read it again), but it is a gorgeous depiction of the roaring '20s in all its glitz and glamour, and it does use some of Fitzgerald's lyrical text. I actually found the brutal ending to be the best part of the show, after all of the deaths that are quite startling after the comedy tone of the majority of the show, when Nick states one of the most famous closing lines in all of literature: "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." And we see those glitzy party goers, their words and movements now dark and hollow. We finally get the essence, the heart of the story, but it's too little, too late. Still, I enjoyed the show and I think it's worth seeing, if only for the stunning design, gorgeous costumes, fabulous dancing (continuing through June 7 - click here for the official ticketing site, including information about student, educator, and industry rush tickets).