I’ve been feeling a bit stressed and overscheduled for the last little while so have been trying to keep from adding more events to my calendar in the next few months, but last week Spamalot opened for a return engagement in Detroit and I decided to see if I could get tickets at nearly the last minute, since I regretted missing it the last time the tour came through and the economy needs stimulating, after all. Well, there must have been a block of seats released from somewhere, as I was able to score second row center and even found a discount code that worked for the Saturday matinee. Thus did Mr. Karen and I dress up more than usual and head off to the Fisher Theater, which is, not surprisingly, inside the Fisher Building. I love the Fisher Building; it’s a National Historic Landmark and has gorgeous mosaics and elaborate elevator doors and all sorts of other decorative elements that just aren’t a part of modern skyscrapers. I knew the theater had been closed much of last year for renovations ( it had been a topic of conversation at City Knits, the yarn shop in the building, on my visits there), so I was interested to see what they’d done inside. Now, it had been quite a while since I’d last seen a show there, but I didn’t really notice much of a change. The décor was still pretty plain and 60s retro, not at all up to the same standard as the building’s lobby. I looked it up later and found that the renovations were to the bar and party areas, not the seating area. Too bad, but with the Michigan economy what it is these days, understandable.

Since it was a matinee, I thought we might end up seeing some understudies, so I purposely didn’t look up who was supposed to be in the cast ahead of time to avoid any possible disappointment. But come show time, there was no announcement about the part of X being played by Y, and we got to see Richard Chamberlain as King Arthur and all the other leads in their proper parts. (I can only hope I look half as good as Mr. Chamberlain when I’m in my 70s.) I enjoyed the show and laughed a lot. I would have been really surprised if that hadn’t been the case, since I watched much Monty Python in my formative years and never lost my taste for it.