An amusing behind-the-scenes look at a unique Broadway smash.
A Monty Python member offers a glimpse into the making of a very silly musical.
Spamalot, based on the 1975 comedy Monty Python and the Holy Grail, debuted on Broadway in 2005. This book is the diary Idle kept throughout rehearsals and production, “the story of a most unlikely theatrical hit, from the first read-through in New York to the first previews in Chicago until finally, a Broadway opening.” The author began the script in 2001, when he realized the source material was perfect for a musical. “It already had three great songs, there are no horses onstage, and the quest for the Holy Grail is Wagnerian in scope,” he writes. “Not the Ring cycle exactly, more the Rinse cycle.” Idle covers everything: lining up the cast and crew, including longtime friend Mike Nichols as director; arguing over the script and songs; figuring out technical details, such as “how we are going to make the Killer Rabbit fly around the stage”; and the staging of the show, including “Opening Knight” on Broadway. He includes lyrics from deleted songs, emails, and copious anecdotes, such as the time “two huge New York cops” recognized him in front of the theater and wished him good luck with the show. Idle is also candid about health issues, from a tendon injury to food poisoning in Chicago to his teenager daughter’s “severe bipolar episode” before the Broadway opening, for which he blames himself: “I have been absent these many months, fathering a musical. What a terrible price to pay for success.” The author offers plenty of comedy to delight fans. Despite some clunkers, the text includes many hilarious bits, as when he begins an email to Nichols with, “Hello, mein Führer. Is that too formal?”
An amusing behind-the-scenes look at a unique Broadway smash.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2024
ISBN: 9780593800485
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: June 25, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.
A former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s.
Discovered on a Manhattan street in 2020 and introduced on Stanton’s Humans of New York Instagram page, Johnson, then 76, shares her dynamic history as a “fiercely independent” Black burlesque dancer who used the stage name Tanqueray and became a celebrated fixture in midtown adult theaters. “I was the only black girl making white girl money,” she boasts, telling a vibrant story about sex and struggle in a bygone era. Frank and unapologetic, Johnson vividly captures aspects of her former life as a stage seductress shimmying to blues tracks during 18-minute sets or sewing lingerie for plus-sized dancers. Though her work was far from the Broadway shows she dreamed about, it eventually became all about the nightly hustle to simply survive. Her anecdotes are humorous, heartfelt, and supremely captivating, recounted with the passion of a true survivor and the acerbic wit of a weathered, street-wise New Yorker. She shares stories of growing up in an abusive household in Albany in the 1940s, a teenage pregnancy, and prison time for robbery as nonchalantly as she recalls selling rhinestone G-strings to prostitutes to make them sparkle in the headlights of passing cars. Complemented by an array of revealing personal photographs, the narrative alternates between heartfelt nostalgia about the seedier side of Manhattan’s go-go scene and funny quips about her unconventional stage performances. Encounters with a variety of hardworking dancers, drag queens, and pimps, plus an account of the complexities of a first love with a drug-addled hustler, fill out the memoir with personality and candor. With a narrative assist from Stanton, the result is a consistently titillating and often moving story of human struggle as well as an insider glimpse into the days when Times Square was considered the Big Apple’s gloriously unpolished underbelly. The book also includes Yee’s lush watercolor illustrations.
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-27827-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2022
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.
An experimental, illustrated essay collection that questions neurotypical definitions of what is normal.
From a young age, writer and comedian Myers has been different. In addition to coping with obsessive compulsive disorder and panic attacks, she struggled to read basic social cues. During a round of seven minutes in heaven—a game in which two players spend seven minutes in a closet and are expected to kiss—Myers misread the romantic advances of her best friend and longtime crush, Marley. In Paris, she accidentally invited a sex worker to join her friends for “board games and beer,” thinking he was simply a random stranger who happened to be hitting on her. In community college, a stranger’s request for a pen spiraled her into a panic attack but resulted in a tentative friendship. When the author moved to Australia, she began taking notes on her colleagues in an effort to know them better. As the author says to her co-worker, Tabitha, “there are unspoken social contracts within a workplace that—by some miracle—everyone else already understands, and I don’t….When things Go Without Saying, they Never Get Said, and sometimes people need you to Say Those Things So They Understand What The Hell Is Going On.” At its best, Myers’ prose is vulnerable and humorous, capturing characterization in small but consequential life moments, and her illustrations beautifully complement the text. Unfortunately, the author’s tendency toward unnecessary capitalization and experimental forms is often unsuccessful, breaking the book’s otherwise steady rhythm.
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9780063381308
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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