'Spam,' a lot of it, on menu for WHS music students

Mar. 19—WATERTOWN — "Spamalot," sort of a comedic "knight" club and a parody of a parody, will be staged by Watertown High School music department students for four shows beginning Thursday.

"Spamalot" is a parody of the 1975 film "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," which is a parody of the legend of King Arthur and his quest for the grail. "Spamalot" also adds tongue-in-cheek parodies of Broadway productions. The title of the musical, which opened on Broadway in 2005, is derived from Knights of the Roundtable who sing, "I eat ham and jam and Spam a lot" and other repetitive references to the canned pork product. In turn, "spam" became a term for annoying junk e-mail.

The WHS show will be presented at 7 p.m. Thursday and Friday and at 1 p.m. and 7 p.m. on Saturday.

"When I first announced the show, we had two groups of people: 'Spam-a-what's?' were the people who had no idea what the show was or what it was about," said Rebecca A. Rose, music and vocal instructor at WHS, who directs the musical. "Then I had people who could recite, and did, entire monologues of dialogue from the movie. It's been really cool to see everyone grow to love the show and bring it to life on stage."

Four knights and the king in the production descended from the WHS stage before rehearsal on March 12 to discuss the musical and their characters. Jonah P. Stone, Jack P. Marra, Daniel J. Maurer, Brady M. Guldenpfennig and Evan D. Autote are all seniors.

"Although most of us weren't super familiar with the show at first, once we heard that we were going to do it, we all watched it and got familiar with it," Maurer said. "We came to love it."

"Ten years ago, my father (Christopher D. Autote) played King Author in 'Spamalot' for Lyric Theater here in the community," Autote said. "That's when I first learned about it, even though I never went to see the show."

"When I heard about it being the choice, I thought, 'That could be fun,'" Marra said. "And knowing that we've all been friends for a decade and knowing that we could do it together and have a chance of being knights together, I just knew it'd be fun for all of us."

According to the show's licensing agency, Theatrical Rights Worldwide, the school edition of "Spamalot" is a slightly reworked version of the original Broadway script. It was tested at numerous high schools under the supervision of a teacher/director with 40 years' experience in educational theater. The WHS production is the first time a local school has staged it, although Thousand Islands Central readied it in March of 2020. That production was canned due to the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown.

"I was looking for something that hadn't been done locally, either at all or for a long time — a comedy, and something with a lot of roles to feature our many talented students," Rose said.

She saw the musical several times when was on Broadway from 2005 to 2009. "I also saw the current revival in previews and again over winter break and I laughed just as hard during this show as I did years ago," she said. "To date, it is one of the funniest shows I have ever seen, and I wanted a chance to share that with my students."

"It's very much slapstick humor, which makes it all the more fun for us," Stone said. "It's like skits and sketches we can do together with our friends, but it's definitely more of a PG-13-rating show."

"This is a more mature type of humor. As I have told the kids, we have moved out of our fairy tale era," Rose said. "Even though the premise and story is about King Arthur, Lady of the Lake and the Knights of the Round Table, it is British comedy/satire and not a fairy tale."

The cast and crew, Rose said, "gets" how to be funny. "They pay the proper homage and respect to the movies and humor of 'Monty Python,'" she said. "They all understand that the more seriously they take the humor, the funnier they will be for the audience."

But with the humor, comes a dose of bittersweetness for Rose. "There are two cast members who started their musical career here in the Watertown city district with me as Munchkins in the 2011 Case Middle School production of the 'Wizard of Oz.' We're graduating 17 seniors, ten in the cast and seven in crew. Many of these students have been in my K-4 productions when I was at Case, and others have been with me since they were in middle school. It's hard to believe this is my last show with some of these amazing kids."

"It's been truly amazing over the past six years since we started doing the school shows and awesome to see each other grow into the people we've become and actors," Maurer said. "It's just been awesome to grow up with these guys and also to have a great time on stage."

If you go

WHAT: Monty Python's "Spamalot," school edition, presented by the Watertown High School music department.

WHEN/WHERE: 7 p.m. Thursday and Friday and 1 and 7 p.m. on Saturday at the WHS auditorium, 1335 Washington St.

COST: $5 general admission.

OF NOTE: Recommended for PG-13 and older audiences.