If you’re serious about silly walks, then hop, skip or sashay your way over to CNY Playhouse’s “A Tribute to Monty Python’s Flying Circus” running through Nov. 21, at ShoppingTown DeWitt.
A high-spirited cast of 10, all speaking with proper English accents, pay humorous homage to Monty Python as they faithfully recreate a couple dozen of the British comedy troupe’s zaniest sketches. Act 1 opens abruptly, even before the play is officially introduced, with an angry architect’s audition featuring an over-the-top Isaiah Vergara.
In a somewhat quieter skit, Justin Polly portrays a lusty marriage counselor who silently seduces the agreeable wife (Kasey McHale) of a clueless cuckolded husband (Doug Rougeux).
Director Alan Stillman — a CNY Playhouse comedy standout — appears in a recurring role as a stiff-upper-lipped army colonel. The officer first appears fielding the complaints of a new recruit played by Aidan Yazell who steadfastly and hilariously refuses to embrace a soldier’s fate to kill or be killed.
Out of the blue, the military sketch is invaded by a couple of Mafia thugs (Vergara and Rougeux) who try to shake down the colonel for protection.
Later Stillman’s helmeted colonel pops up here and there to complain that this scene or that is “too silly.” And the opening night audience seemed to agree.
While the humour of Monty Python — John Cleese, Eric Idle, Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones and Michael Palin — may be an acquired taste, many of its best-known bits resurface here guaranteed to draw guffaws.
There’s the Ministry of Silly Walks with a gangly Eric Feldstein as the minister, an all-Spam restaurant with Vergara as a wiggy waitress, several sudden Spanish Inquisitions, a disappointingly Dead Parrot and a luminous Lumberjack Song. McHale’s facial expressions run the gamut from quizzical to disgust to uncontrolled weeping as she listens to Feldstein sing the praises of cross-dressing.
The always-amusing actor Simon Moody — who tap danced on “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” in the 2013 CNY Playhouse production of Monty Python’s “Spamalot” — played plenty of roles here ranging from a hard-of-hearing constable to a Foster’s-guzzling Australian philosophy professor.
Completing the cast are sound designer Dusten Blake playing guitar and ukulele and stage manager Rachel Briscoe who joins the ensemble for the finale, a ballsy blue tune led by the plucky Justin Polly.
“A Tribute to Monty Python’s Flying Circus” runs at 8 p.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturday, Nov. 19, 20 and 21. Tickets cost $17 on Thursday, and $20 Friday and Saturday. CNY Playhouse is located near the Macy’s entrance at DeWitt’s ShoppingTown Mall; 885-8960; cnyplayhouse.com.
