|
Class of '68 Presents SHAMALOT
Diane Goldberg - Head of Show |
"Has Anybody Seen a Dragon?" demands Gael-wyn Galahad. Fresh from Knight Training School, she's come to Paris to try her hand - and sword - on the Shamalot case. Confident that truth and virtue will help her prove uncommon in a world of common men, Gael-wyn is unshaken by the dire predictions of the retiring Red Cross Knight. Her two co-workers - J. Edda Emerson of the F.I.B. and 362436 of the C.I.I. - try to explain that changing times have necessitated Togetherness, but even the lack of "single-handed glory" can't make Gael-wyn ("my friends call me the Blue Cross Knight") swerve from her knightly path.
Shamalot, she discovers, is the ivory-tower outpost of the world's greatest academic minds, who have fled their universities to escape the corrupting influence of the Outside. Gael-wyn's task is to persuade them to return. To "Saturday roll calls where nobody answers?" they demand, and counter her demand by singing the virtues af [sic] Shamalot. When one of the young assistant professors - Cerebra Questa - doubts the wisdom of the remaining, the professors further condemn Outside conditions with the solemn Dead Dirge. Dismayed at her failure, Gael-wyn is persuaded by Questa to take on another mission - to rescue Nina Karenina, the Blussian ballerina-defector who is being hunted by Blussian's Paris agents because she has valuable bomb plans. Gael-wyn accepts the challenge and she and Nina head for the Left Bank, where the local Lefters are celebrating their way of life in Sin on the Seine. Enter three Blussians - Glorious Leader, Alexi Leatherlicker, and Boris Ustinov (our hero). Boris has been entrusted with the vital job of finding Karenina - rumored to be with something called the Blue Cross Knight - and bringing her and the plans to Blussian Paris Headquarters. Exit Glorious Leader and Leatherlicker. Boris, left alone, bumps into Gael-wyn. They take one look and fall in love. While they are wandering along the banks, Karenina laments the rebellious nature that caused her to become a Wild Swan. Boris and Gael-wyn return, and he discovers that she is the Blue Cross Knight. Torn between love and duty, he is persuaded to the latter when Glorious Leader and Leatherlicker admonish his hesitancy in The State. Boris seizes Karenina, and Gael-wyn is left alone to reflect on her ill fated love for Boris. All she can do is to try to recover Nina, and she and her co-workers go to Shamalot for help. Here they find Questa facing Exile for having helped one from the Outside, and when they try to urge the professors to help them, are answered with the derisive P.A.P. Determined to go it alone, they leave to storm Blussian Paris Headquarters, swordfighting their way in. About to be overcome, they hear the sweet strains of Pomp and Circumstance - the professors have come down from their ivory tower at last! During the subsequent fight, Boris and Gael-wyn encounter each other, and are goaded into battle by their respective team-mates. Boris disarms Gael-wyn, but cannot kill her, so Glorious Leader starts to do it for him. Boris is forced to kill him, and then he and Gael-wyn finish off the rest of the Blussians in the Good Old Fashioned Day. The professors announce their new, world-oriented outlook in another version of Shamalot, and the play ends.
|
"Has Anybody Seen a Dragon?"
|