Within the past few months, the Elkhorn North choir program has been hard at work to produce the 2025 school musical, Spamalot.
Spamalot is a musical comedy that is based on the original film Monty Python and The Holy Grail from 1975. The 2005 Broadway production won three awards, including Best Musical. The musical was created by Eric Idle along with assistance from John Du Prez, who helped compose the music.
The musical follows the main character King Arthur who attempts to arrange a group of knights, referred to as “The Knights of The Round Table”. After this group is established, they receive a quest from God to search for the Holy Grail.
The school musical is directed by choir director Casey Allen along with help from Ben Petrmichl, the pit orchestra director, and Ellis Perdue, the tech team manager.
Spamalot features the following main characters: King Arthur (sophomore Douglas Towey), Lady of The Lake (senior Sophia Sweeney), Servant Patsy (freshman Sydney Sweeney), Sir Dennis Galahad (senior Ronan Clements), Sir Robin (senior Andrue Hackendahl), and Lancelot du Lac (senior Bailey Wilkins).
This year’s musical was set to debut on November 6 with following shows on the 7, 8, and 9. However, in previous years, the show dates have always been a week later than this years’ dates.
With the show being pushed forward one whole week, various challenges have troubled the entire production. One prominent struggle that the entire cast faced was bringing the whole show together with such little time. Though one week may not seem like a lot, the cast values every last minute of rehearsal time they can get.
“We definitely felt the lack of time this past week,” Allen said. “A lot of things came together during the show week that you would hope we would accomplish during tech week.”
Additionally, the pit orchestra and tech team had similar adversities. With less time to prepare and clean scenes with the choir, both crews had to manage with only a couple of rehearsals with the entire cast.
“We did not have a lot of time to rehearse and practice the music,” senior pit orchestra player Afra Majumder said. “So learning the show in such a short amount of time was difficult.”
However, these difficulties did not set them back. The cast was able to successfully put everything on stage in time for the premiere night.
“Being in a pit orchestra has helped me find what I enjoy doing in terms of music,” Majumder said. “Being able to perform in this setting is very exciting, especially when we get to work with so many professional musicians.”
Despite less time to work on Spamalot, the choir department has managed to persevere and create an unforgettable show.
“We all really wanted to be there, and it really shows in our performance and how we put up throughout the show,” sophomore lead Douglas Towey said.
The premiere show will be this Thursday at 7:00pm. The link to buy tickets is still open for anyone wanting to watch King Arthur’s quest to find the Holy Grail: https://www.onthestage.tickets/show/elkhorn-north-high-school-choir/68eea4b8379a5637a2bce91f
