GIRD YOUR LOINS FOR A GREAT FEAST
You’ll laugh a lot as the Saskatoon Summer Players bring Monty Python’s Spamalot to life on stage
Spamalot works. It works even if you don’t know about the killer rabbit or the knights who say “ni.” Or the man who isn’t dead yet. Or the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch.
“It’s a lot of fun,” says Kristel Harder, who plays the Lady of the Lake. “It’s fun if you know musicals and you know Monty Python, but it’s also a really great time if you don’t.
“The first time I saw it I was quite young and I remember thinking that I was in a little bit of pain in the second act from laughing so much.”
Harder makes her Saskatoon Summer Players debut with Spamalot. The large-scale musical that makes fun of musicals is inspired by the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the one where the Knights of the Roundtable ride around on pretend horses with a servant clacking coconut halves together.
Director Lorna Batycki describes it as “a completely hilarious labour of love.” The massive undertaking involves more than 100 volunteers on and off stage.
“It’s really cool, I’ve never been in a show this big since maybe high school,” Harder says.
“Most of the time in musicals you have to do a lot of work to amp it up, to make it fill that huge stage.” Not so here.
As Lady of the Lake, she gets cheeky songs like The Song that Goes Like This and Whatever Happened to My Part.
“She’s quite playful and definitely a bit of a diva. The actress in her kind of comes out, that blend of being aware that it’s a show and being part of a show, which is a lot of fun to get to play with.”
Harder has been a fan of musicals since childhood when she listened to the cast recordings of Les Miz and Phantom of the Opera over and over.
“When I was six, my birthday present was to go see Phantom. I think I just cried the whole time. I always dreamt I would get to do that some day but didn’t think it was a plausible dream.”
In fact, it was. Harder enrolled in musical theatre and Grant MacEwan University and found that singing, dancing and acting were as great as she’d hoped.
“I ended up having just the most incredible couple of years and realized I had a huge passion for all three of those parts of it. And then I went on to do my masters because mostly I would just like to stay in school and get to do musical theatre that way forever and ever.
“It’s a bit like falling in love,” Harder says.
“I feel like I found the one that makes me very happy.”
Director Lorna Batycki describes this production of Spamalot as ‘a completely hilarious labour of love.’