Come September and it’s time for seasoned musical director Leila Alvares’s annual Broadway-style show. This time it is ‘Monty Python’s Spamalot’, adapted from the 1975 film ‘Monty Python and the Holy Grail’, an irreverent parody of the King Arthur Legend. The title is a portmanteau of Spam and Camelot.
It retells the legend of ‘King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table’, featuring a bevy of beautiful show girls, various barnyard animals, killer rabbits and French people. In the entertaining story, King Arthur and the Lady of the Lake search for the Holy Grail and ‘always look on the bright side of life’.
Alvares’s debut musical was ‘Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat’ in 1997. Ever since, she has been producing an annual musical (barring three years during the pandemic).
Her repertoire of past musicals includes classics such as ‘Grease’, ‘My Fair Lady’, ‘Sound of Music’, ‘Fiddler on the Roof’, ‘Ghost the Musical’, ‘Young Frankenstein’ and ‘Dirty Rotten Scoundrels’, among others.
The fundraiser musicals are produced by her non-profit ‘The C A U S E Foundation’ (Cooperation of the Arts for the Underprivileged in Society and Environment).
Excerpts from an interview with Alvares:
What led you to choose this musical?
I did this 14 years ago and I’m doing it for the second time. The reason is, ninety percent of my musicals are funny. I like it that way. I like audiences to come and leave the show feeling happy. This one is hilarious; for two hours the audience can forget their problems and just laugh.
Why again after so long?
Many people had missed it, so I decided to do it again. Also, people told me to take it to the next level. But for that you need money and with not much sponsorship, we spent a hell lot of money. A few of us created a corpus fund. We took it to Goa and Mangaluru, and the NCPA invited us to perform in Mumbai.
Is it any different this time?
The script remains the same but I’ve made things funnier and better than what they were. I’ve changed the way I’m portraying certain scenes. I’ve changed some things to make it more local. I think the audience will be in for a treat, especially Monty Python fans.
Where there’s a lot of ‘Americanisms’ in the way they say something or a reference to something that happened in America, I change that into something more relatable.
Actors in the Broadway and Westend shows played multiple parts in Monty Python?
Yes, three of my actors are doing multiple roles. Not only in Monty Python, over the years, if I didn’t get the right actor for a certain character, I would ask a good actor to play multiple roles.
You’ve been staging musicals for over twenty-five years. The audience response must be music to your ears.
Yes, it is. After Covid-19, we were worried because for three years we didn’t do shows but for our 25th anniversary, we did ‘Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat’. We got full houses.
Also, over the years, we’ve lost a lot of our younger audience, college students who used to attend our shows; we did five shows and full houses.
How has your musical journey been?
It is something I look forward to doing for three months every year; the rest of the time I’m happy running my homestay in Kodagu. I love doing musicals, I’ve enjoyed every moment. After one is over, I start planning for the next.
(The musical is being staged in Bengaluru, Margoa, Mysuruand Mangaluru. Details online)