SOUNDTRACK

Original Cast Recording Monty Python's Spamalot (UNIVERSAL CLASSICS)

Most contemporary Broadway musicals get so weighed down in romance or tragedy that old-fashioned Marx Brothers silliness gets shunted aside. While the Tony-winning Spamalot will never erase memories of its inspiration, the movie classic Monty Python and the Holy Grail, there's something revolutionary in seeing a big-name cast happily making fools of themselves. The music by John Du Prez and lyrics by Python Eric Hie target conventional Broadway "The Song That Goes Like This" spoofs the syrupy power ballads in Euro-musicals like Les Miz and Phantom ("A sentimental song that casts a magic spell/They all will hum along/Well overact like heir). Tm All Alone"

The World on Sunday: Graphic Art in Joseph Pulitzer's Newspaper (1898-1911) Edited by Nicholson Baker and Margaret Brentano Bulfinch Press, 144pp., $50

has King Arthur (Tim Curry) soliloquize on loneliness with a giant chorus behind him. Spamalot retains and occasionally expands uponHoly Grail's original songs;"The Knights of the Round Table" is now a full-fledged production number ("We do routines and gory scenes/That are too hot for cable!") climaxing in a Steve-&-Eydie scat arrangement. Other old Python material is interpolated, most notably "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" from the Python's Life of Brian; taken-out of its original crucifixion context, however, it sounds awfully generic. The cast is in good form, with Curry's Ring Arthur equal to Graham Chapman's film performance. Hank Azaria (Moe and Apu on The Simpsons) is in solid voice as Sir Lancelot who eventually finds his inner Peter Allen ("His Name Is Lancelot") and Frasier's David Hyde Pierce is funny as the wimpy Sir Robin. In the thankless role of the token actual woman in a Python project, Sara Ramirez (as The Lady ofThe Lake, complete with Laker Girls) is first-rate. The cast and creative team have Broadway pretentiousness in their sights, and with Spamalot they've bagged it and mounted it on the wall like a moose's head. Mynd you, m00se bites Kan be pretty nasti...
Andrew Milner

Author Nicholson Baker made the preservation of newsprint the subject of his 2002 bookDouble FoldLibraries and the Assault on Paper, so upon hearing that the British Library was planning on destroying its bound copies of the long-defunct New York World, he and his wife, Margaret Brentano, bought the volumesfor $150,000. The couple went through each volume, gradually falling in love with the World's Sunday magazine, comic, fashion and children's supplements. The "World's editors and illustrators and writers were obviously having a fantastictime,"Baker writes in the foreword, "cackling to themselves, we imagined, as every week they published another vaudeville revue of urban urges and preoccupations."Baker and Brentano have preserved 144 of the color pages (from 1898 to 1911) in The World on Sunday. Reproducing the pages at about one-third the original size, the book's highlights include Spanish-American War coverage (one illustration depicts Teddy Roosevelt as a warship, complete with pince-nez glasses and mustache), an original Mark Twain essay ("My First Lie and How I Got Out of It") and depictions of the city's growth ("How Far Can New York Climb into the Skyr asks one 1907 article, while a 1909 picture illustration of dirigibles touts the city's "seven levels of transit"). Baker and Brentano wisely contrast the color supplements with the World's drab black-and-white news pages, which are still fascinating in their own right. Next to an 1899 World ad promising a cure for drunkenness, for example, there's one touting morphine (ORIGINAL AND ONLY PERFECT

HOME CURE IN THE WORLD. ABSOLUTELY PAINLESS. TRIAL BOTTLE FREE). If that isn't mind-altering enough, a later World magazine article presents members of New York's Technology Club sipping "radioactive" cocktails (one part sulfate of quinine to 50,000 parts water, according to the recipe). As the Inquirer has ceased THE production of its Sunday magazine, it's all the more reason to appreciate Baker and Brentano's labor of love here. The World on Sundays attests to the artistry and historical value of a longneglected part of great news-MA papering. Andrew Milner "R Tnnnr