Comic Karate

By T.E. Kalem

MONTY PYTHON LIVE!

The human body is one of comedy's supple tools. In agility, it releases tonic exuberance. As an object of humiliation through banana-peel pratfalls or pies in the face, it evokes instant delight. Even distortions or grotesqueries of the body--obesity, dwarfishness, eccentric gaits, tics, stutters, deafness and drunken staggers--have all been known to provoke a startling comic catharsis in playgoers.

The silent film thrived on that catharsis. So did vaudeville, and that Broadway combustion engine of explosive anarchy known as Hellzapoppin. Britain's Monty Python troupe, which opened live at Manhattan's City Center last week, renews that comic tradition, and its success in television, movies and now, onstage, shows that many audiences are parched for it. If there is anything novel about the Pythonites (six men, with extras for this production), it is only that they are practicing comic karate, English-style, and Americans always find it strangely exotic to think of the British as vulgar, irreverent, silly, violent and sexual, both straight and kinky, all of which they can be and are.

In Monty Python Live! the operative word is "live," for almost all of the routines have been seen before on American TV. Fortunately, they are unkillably hilarious even in repetition. Since the performers understandably need to catch their breath, film clips share equal billing with the live players' stage antics. When John Cleese delivers a diatribe to a shyster pet-shop owner while flogging the dead parrot that has been sold to him, the funning is lethally potent. So is the spoof on TV wrestling, in which the solo performer, Graham Chapman, is finger-jabbed and pretzel-twisted by an invisible opponent.

Philosophers as soccer kings get mauled in a ludicrous film match between the prize thinkers of Greece and Germany, in which the Greeks win by a head-thumping, last-minute goal from the great dome of Aristotle. After a trying day in court, two justices (Eric Idle and Neil Innes) flip their wigs and throw off the robes of high judicial office to reveal themselves in black silky feminine underthings. Apparently, a case of habeas corpus.

No matter how high the brow or how low, Monty Python Live! creases it with jet-propelled mirth.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.