GETTY
And lo, it came to pass that Monty Python’s Flying Circus reached the age of forty years. And verily it was decided by the surviving members of the Python Team (his holiness John Cleese excepted) to give thanks and praise for this sacred moment by descending from their separate starry havens for one night only at the Royal Albert Hall. And their faithful followers did pay through the nose to join them in that joy, preparing themselves to be amazed. For it was decreed that for the first time in human history, an oratorio based on Life of Brian was to be delivered unto them.
Well, were the lucky few who packed the Albert Hall to the rafters last night amazed? Gratitude, I think, was the primary emotion on display. Gratitude that simmered gently at first, announcing itself in warm-hearted laughter and applause at the merest whiff of an appearance by a Python other than Eric Idle, whose show (written in collaboration with his Spamalot partner John Du Prez) this was - and who took to the stage alongside four highly trained opera singers, with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus massed behind them.
That gratitude finally erupted in a tidal wave of affection as Always Look On The Bright Side of Life segued into a semi-surprise reprise of the Lumberjack Song. The audience, forming one barmy army of Python devotees - as if in parody of the Last Night of the Proms - waved fake candles in the air, sang and whistled along, and would hardly let Mssrs Idle, Palin, Gilliam and Jones out of their clutches.
There was little disguising the fact though, that between the start of the show - when we got a fantastic blast of that theme tune (The Liberty Bell) - and the hugely nostalgic finale, there was little to get genuinely worked up about. Or really laugh about. The film - released 30 years ago - is generally held to be comedy perfection. The oratorio swiftly disappointed in comparison: the larky grit of the swords-and-sandals Hollywood pastiche was here replaced by respectable sleekness.
A skeletal structure of the story remained but rather than fleshing it out in surprising ways, the songs - overly reliant on the supposed hilarity of repeated pomp and bombast - felt malnourished. It hardly helped that the part of Brian, the mistaken messiah immortalised by Graham Chapman, was played by well-groomed tenor William Ferguson. Or that Brian’s mum was no longer Terry Jones’ squarking harridan but plush mezzo soprano Rosalind Plowright. Overall, it never felt, well, naughty enough.
But who wants to be the party-pooper? The Pythons have earned their place in history. And they’ve earned the right to muck about with experiments like this. At least they’ve not become a tired self-tribute act, rehashing old material. The whole thing was being filmed - and I wouldn’t blame anyone for digging into their pockets to see what all the fuss wasn’t about. We can’t quite get enough of them, even now.
