What: John Cleese and Eric Idle: Together Again at Last … For the Very First Time
Where: McPherson Playhouse
When: Oct. 16, 17, 18
Rating: four (out of five)
It’s possible Monty Python retains the power to shock and outrage. But these days, they prefer to do it from comfy red easy chairs.
On Sunday, John Cleese and Eric Idle opened the first of a three-night run of Together Again at Last … For the Very First Time at the McPherson Playhouse. And yes, for a chunk of that time they sat in easy chairs.
These famous English comedians are now in their eighth decade. Not young. But don’t be fooled — their touring act is no vanity project. It’s certainly not a polite tea-time in the old folks’ home.
The John and Eric show is surprisingly spritely. This conversational night out proved a bona-fide pleasure — entertaining and touching, as much as it is amusing.
For two solid hours, Cleese and Idle swapped stories, enacted skits, sang songs and explained vintage footage culled from their careers. We sang along to Eric the Half a Bee and Always Look on the Bright Side of Life. The sold-out boomer crowd loved it — book-ending the show with standing ovations and cheers.
Still a towering presence, a raspy-voiced Cleese (looking rounder than he did in A Fish Called Wanda) chatted amiably. Idle, meanwhile, was the soul of affability. The two appear genuinely to be friends after 53 years. At the end of Sunday’s show, Cleese gave Idle a kiss on the cheek — a gesture that (by some miracle) seemed sincere rather than show-biz-y.
As one might expect, the audience gets a potted history of their comedy past. Cleese and Idle met at Cambridge University in the early 1960s, where they were members of the Cambridge University Footlights revue — a spawning ground for many famous comedians. In their stage show, they discuss early TV programs for which they wrote and performed, such as Do Not Adjust Your Set.
Television offers came immediately. Recognition came early for these clever and educated young men. One thing Together Again at Last … For the Very First Time makes clear is that their attitude of gonzo irreverence was important to their success.
All these decades later, Monty Python’s antics still have the power to — well, if not shock, then make us blink very fast. Cleese and Idle screened a clip in which the troupe is interviewed by Robert Klein. The late Graham Chapman is represented by a cremation urn sitting on a table. Cleese then awkwardly arises and the ashes spill spectacularly over a carpet.
On stage, the pair acted out a skit that also exemplifies this sense of joyous anarchy. Idle is an undertaker who explains dead bodies can be buried, burned or tossed into the Thames. The routine (written by Chapman and Cleese) then wades into riskier comedic waters. The undertaker suggests the body in question be consumed, as the deceased was quite young.
“I think,” Idle says, “we’ve got an eater.”
Politically correct it is not. In one of the show’s less-successful sequences, Cleese asks: “How about a nice racial joke?” And then he tells a really dumb one about an Italian wedding. The point is that Python finds the notion of PC humour ridiculous and — what’s worse — unfunny. But this misstep came off like the grumbling of the peevish great-uncle.
Chapman is remembered with affection in Together Again at Last … For the Very First Time. So is Python member Terry Jones, who last month went public about suffering from a form of dementia that has robbed him of his ability to speak.
In a touching performance, while images of Jones were projected, Idle played guitar and sang Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.
The song, a spoof of 1920s pop songs from Monty Python’s The Life of Brian, is a lovely ditty, and far less rude than many Python songs.
Nonetheless, a punky irreverence once again jostles in with such lyrics as: “Life’s a piece of s--- when you look at it/ Life’s a laugh and death’s a joke, it’s true.”
Singing along to Eric the Half a Bee, with the lyrics helpfully projected, I wondered if this would be my equivalent of an Evening with Buster Keaton or Laurel and Hardy.
Can it be that Together Again at Last … For the Very First Time is a guilty geezer pleasure for my generation?
Maybe. And that’s OK, I thought, while singing about getting to know half a bee “semi-carnally” … but never Cyril Connolly.
