Broadway nobility to visit

Tony winner Gary Beach leads 'Spamalot' on tour

It's rare to see a Broadway marquee name attached to a road tour. And for good reason.

Tours are notoriously arduous, with mind-numbing highway treks added to the already rigorous schedule of eight shows a week.

But Gary Beach is bucking that trend with his road stint as the legendary King Arthur in "Monty Python's Spamalot," an embellished stage adaptation of the 1975 film "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," which opens at Raleigh's Memorial Auditorium Tuesday.

Beach -- best known for his Tony-winning turn as Roger De Bris in "The Producers," a role he revived on film -- says he hadn't toured in 23 years. But he and his partner, Jeff, had New York City cabin fever after eight years of Beach's back-to-back Broadway gigs.

"I went on online and looked at the tour dates, and all of the sudden we got this wild idea, you know: 'This could be the greatest road trip ever. Get the SUV, take the dog, take cooking utensils and clothes and whatever and just drive around the country,'" Beach says in a telephone interview from a tour stop in Birmingham, Ala.

Touring in an election year is especially exciting, Beach says, because he and Jeff are political junkies.

To go from Raleigh to Appleton, Wis., "and to experience all the blues and reds in between, it's really interesting," he says. "And to be able to read the local papers and find out all the political stuff that's happening is really fun for us."

Seeing how towns have changed since his last jaunt through them a quarter-century ago is also eye-opening, he says. Birmingham is a prime example.

"To put it bluntly, last time I was here, George Wallace was governor," he says. "So it's changed a whole lot."

Beach's Raleigh memories are fresher. He played the title role in N.C. Theatre's 1999 production of "The Music Man," directed by his "Beauty and the Beast" Broadway co-star, Terrence Mann, who was then NCT's artistic director. And he already knew the state well, having grown up in Virginia and graduated from N.C. School of the Arts.

Beach says he was also attracted to the role of King Arthur, a departure from the norm for him.

"Usually I play one of the loonies," he says. "But in this, I'm at the center of the storm. King Arthur is sort of the plot. And the loonies are the knights around him -- Lancelot, Galahad, Robin, all of these guys."

That's not to say Arthur is a stick in the mud. Raleigh-raised actress Bree Branker, who plays one of the Laker Girls (think Lady of the Lake) and other ensemble parts, says Beach is a riot.

"He has such classical acting shtick with the comedy, versus a more contemporary feel," says Branker, 20, who joined the tour last month, as did Beach. "And that makes it even funnier, because it is Monty Python but a lot of the jokes are current. There's like an Amy Winehouse reference and stuff like that. And then he does the classical acting comedy. It's just funny because it becomes layers upon layers."

Raleigh-raised Broadway costume designer William Ivey Long, who worked with Beach on "The Producers" and "La Cage aux Folles," says Beach has charisma to burn.

"You cannot not notice him," Long says. "In fact, I can't even imagine Gary Beach ever being in a chorus. I can't imagine a chorus that would contain him, he's so charismatic."

He's also fearless, Long says.

"He'll dive into anything -- any challenge, any impossible assignment," he says. "And fearless means not afraid to look foolish. Not even worried about how you look, just diving right in. That's why he's the directors' darling."

But even a seemingly fail-safe path to laughs -- like this script, which Python star Eric Idle wrote (also penning the lyrics and co-writing the music) -- can be tricky without the right approach, Beach says.

Seriousness is the key to effective comedy, he says.

"In my time that I spent with 'The Producers,' which is a wild, sort of broad comedy, people would come in and try to be funny and they would die a thousand deaths," he says. "But if they came in and were real and just played the situation, it was always funny."

"Spamalot" is the same, he says.

"And this is even further out there -- with Tim the Enchanter and the Black Knight and the Knights of Ni; it's out there," he says. "But if you react to the reality in the center, in yourself, then it's going to be funny.