Call it "Spoofalot".

Monty Python's Spamalot * Book and lyrics by Eric Idle; music by Idle and John Du Prez * Directed by Mike Nichols * Starring David Hyde Pierce, Tim Curry, Hank Azaria, Christopher Sieber * Shubert Theatre, New York City (open-ended run)

Monty Python's Spamalot is a frothy frappe of pop-cultural references that's tastier but no more substantial than the canned slab of processed pork from which it takes its title. Based on the 1975 film Monty Python and the Holy Grail, a "Fractured Fairy Tales" version of Sir Lancelot's initiation into King Arthur's Knights of the Round Table, it's a godsend to Python cultists in the audience, who greet each comic routine with the ecstatic outburst of rock fans hearing the first notes of a beloved hit.

As King Arthur drolly underplayed by Tim Curry, who's come a long way since Rocky Horror--leads his merry band through encounters with the Knights Who Say Ni, the French Taunter ("I fart in your general direction!"), and a killer rabbit, the show digresses into parodying other musicals. David Hyde Pierce's Sir Robin, whose long tresses make him a dead ringer for Charlotte Rampling, insists that "You Won't Succeed on Broadway (If You Haven't Any Jews)," which cues a wacky side trip to Fiddler on the Roof. Sara Ramirez's Lady of the Lake is a dazzling compound of Liza, Patti LuPone, and every American Idol Whitney wannabe. She and Christopher Sieber, as the hair-tossingly vain Sir Galahad, mock the formulaic pomposity of Andrew Lloyd Webber with the faux-Phantom power ballad "The Song That Goes Like This": "I'll sing it in your face / While we both embrace / And then we change the key!" And when the damsel he rescues turns out to be Prince Herbert, Sir Lancelot (Hank Azaria) comes out in tutti-frutti colors as The Boy From Oz.

Director Mike Nichols expertly creates a loosey-goosey comedy-club ambience, but the incessant self-referentialism of Spamalot makes it both timely (all the other musicals, like The Producers and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, are doing it) and redundant. It's as if the creators skipped the show and went right to the Forbidden Broadway takeoff.