Parrot fashion
The Revolution Orchestra comes to grips with Monty Python’s humor and music
Anyone who has caught the “Dead Parrot” classic Monty Python sketch will get the madcap irreverent spirit that pervades the latest multidisciplinary escapade by the Revolution Orchestra gang. Ensemble founders artistic director-composer-arranger Zohar Sharon and conductor Roy Oppenheim call their new show (which opens the orchestra’s new season at the Israeli Opera House on February 11 at 8 p.m.) The Gospel According to Monty Python.
The titular footnote goes: “an original work for an orchestra, choir, and a dead parrot.” As intriguing marketing hooks go, that takes some beating, with the explanatory addendum from Sharon and Oppenheim that the forthcoming production is “a musical circus that revisits the humor and madness of Monty Python.”
Oppenheim and the orchestra will be joined on stage by both the Moran Youth Choir with conductor Tom Karni and the Moran Choir conducted by Carmel Antopolsky Amit – with Moran founder Naomi Faran serving as musical director for the occasion. Of course, the Pythons were primarily known for their comedic dialogue, as well as the ingenious animation of Terry Gilliam – and actor Ben Peri, who lived in London between the ages of two and 14, will ensure the predominantly musical content is given the right jocular context with some suitably delivered sketches. “Ben gets the accent just right,” Oppenheim notes.
In truth, the Pythons invoked all kinds of accents from around the United Kingdom for their TV series, which drew incremental audiences between 1969-1974 – and for their subsequent movies. However, the East London Cockney accent was a leitmotif of numerous skits and scenes over the years.
Over the years, the Revolution Orchestra has put out all kinds of shows and enjoyed entertaining synergies with artists from right across the musical style spectrum. Its free-flowing oeuvre includes a performance based on the repertoire of seminal Israeli comedy threesome Hagashash Hachiver.
However, as Oppenheim notes, the British bunch-based outing was a very different kettle of fish: “Hagashash Hachiver were three singers who also
did comedy. The Pythons were not really musical.” That is, other than Eric Idle who wrote some of the team’s musical vignettes, most memorably the infectious “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” number which closes blockbuster Python movie Life of Brian.
Oppenheim and Sharon certainly did their homework before getting stuck in.
“Zohar and I watched the four seasons of the Flying Circus [TV series] and the movies. We waded through reams of material,” he laughs. But it wasn’t all fun and games. The viewing time, while no doubt enjoyable, was designed to help the pair arrive at a professional, crowd-pulling end product.
“We wanted to understand the Pythons’ syntax, and what they did do and didn’t do. We were looking to extract that material and transpose it into new contexts.”
The new show should be a treat for Anglos. “Ben Peri, with his perfect accent, does all the sketches in English, says Oppenheim. “You simply can’t Hebraize this thing. You can do that for one or two sketches but you can’t do it for a whole evening. It will all be in English with Hebrew subtitles.” That should make a change for long-suffering English speakers who haven’t yet mastered the local lingo.
Naturally, some of the Pythons’ humor was of a more visual and physical rather than verbal ilk. The “Ministry of Silly Walks” skit, with the impossibly
tall John Cleese demonstrating unparalleled calisthenic agility, is one that springs to mind and there is the fish-slapping sketch, with Cleese and Michael Palin, which also lends itself to non-verbal presentation.
The former was smoothly slotted into the new Revolution Orchestra vehicle, as Oppenheim and Sharon eagerly latched onto the choreographic possibilities it offered. “We thought, what is a silly walk if not a kind of dance? We realized we could underscore the whole sketch with a Tchaikovsky waltz.” Sounds enchanting. “It works really well,” Oppenheim adds.
As per their favored layered art form choice of presentation, the onstage musical and verbal antics will be augmented by some eye-catching and rib-tickling Pythonesque animation. Gilliam’s seemingly infantile cut-andpaste work was central to the Flying Circus output and should help to up the laughter-inducing sensorial ante for the Israeli Opera House audience. “It is not Disney animation. Let’s put it that way,” Oppenheim observes with more than a touch of understatement.
The lack of the Pythons’ natural musical talent was neatly sidestepped by Oppenheim and Sharon as they tapped into another indispensable comedic skill. “When we did the Hagashash show we cut away at the original material and we were concerned they might not like it. [Hagashash Hachiver member] Shaike Levy came to see the show and he told us that comedy is not about the punch line, it is about the timing.”
That fit the Python left field bill down to a tee.
One of the British group’s innovative contributions to British – and global – humor was that they often left their audience hanging at the end of a sketch. The stream-of-consciousness element popped up frequently and, gradually, they came to realize that you can manage pretty well without “neat closure.” Synchronicity also came into play in the Revolution Orchestra’s modus operandi.
“Shaike told us that timing is the most important thing and that we, as musicians, have good timing. The Pythons had brilliant timing and they gave us something like raw material for a musical creation.”
Perhaps a drop or two of farcical, iconoclastic humor during these trying times might be just the ticket. Sharon and Oppenheim are certainly looking to offer us a glimpse or two of the bright side of life.
“We are aiming to create an onstage episode of 21st-century ‘Flying Circus,’” the conductor explains. That sounds like a delightfully worthy undertaking, but also a tall order. Oppenheim says it is very much about going with the flow and feeding off the pioneering and revolutionary spirit the Pythons unleashed on an unsuspecting world back in 1969.
“That means we have to go through sketches [and] with or without a reason, cut them off in the middle and you have Gilliam’s animation. It is all an associative stream of consciousness. They are The Beatles of the comedy world, but what they do best is wreak comedic terror. They are always messing up punch lines, on purpose.”
That did present the musical minds with a test. “That is anti-music. In music, you like to reach resolution. You want people to applaud at the end. It is a major challenge for us.”
With their proven track record, Oppenheim, Sharon, and their cohorts will, no doubt, do the British comics justice and leave their Opera House patrons whistling a tune or two, smiling, or possibly laughing out loud, and possibly even rolling in the aisles. Cleese and his pals would surely approve.