A father called me Monday to ask if "Monty Python's Spamalot" is "right" for his 13-year-old son. Based on Tuesday's Benedum Center opening of the national tour, I'd say he'd do better to ask his son whether "Spamalot" is right for a parent, or is it just aimed at adolescent males?

	Joan Marcus King Arthur, played by Michael Siberry, has a seat with Patsy, played by Jeff Dumas, in "Monty Python's Spamalot. Click photo for larger image. 'Monty Python's Spamalot' Where: PNC Broadway Across America and Pittsburgh CLO at Benedum Center, Downtown. When: Through Oct. 1; Tues.-Thurs. 7:30 p.m.; Fri. 8 p.m.; Sat. 2 and 8 p.m.; Sun. 1 and 6:30 p.m. Tickets: $29.50-$73 412- 456-6666.

Of course, I don't really think that, because I, a certified grown-up and Python geek, enjoyed it a lot. But your enjoyment is sharpened if you happen to have an active inner 13-year-old male egging you on, assuming he's as interested in rude humor and female anatomy as most boys of every age.

Python humor turns more on gender than age: Women mainly provide material for prurient jokes. The one female lead in "Spamalot," the Lady of the Lake, is the least Pythonesque thing about it. When the original Pythons, all men, wrote an interesting female role, they generally plopped on a wig and falsies and played her themselves.

There is also an intellectual side to Python humor, with its wide-ranging allusions and detailed parody of style as well as content. The cynicism about the privileges of class or rank adds to this edifice of intelligent social criticism. But a whopping pun or rude suggestion is never far away.

To turn the 1975 movie, "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," into a Broadway musical comedy, author Eric Idle mainly added plenty of American material. While the movie's central mockery is of BBC historical documentary or History Channel reverence toward the past, the stage musical adds parody of American pop icons such as cheerleaders, Las Vegas entertainers and Broadway formulas.

In fact, the musical's true quest is not the grail (the quintessential maguffin, perhaps even for such Grail idolators as Malory or Tennyson) but success on Broadway, which as King Arthur says, is 1,000 years in the future in a country that hasn't been discovered yet.

Hence the show's cheerfully un-P.C. joke about needing to find a Jew to give it Broadway credibility (Idle gets high marks for all the rhymes he manages for "Jew"). The Jew they have in mind is obviously Mel Brooks: "Spamalot" is pretty much a Python-meets-Brooks love child -- witness the historical irreverence and well-endowed chorines on the ample Brooks scale, juggling trays of big round jellies that momentarily look like their own disconnected breasts. And who else but Brooks could rhyme percentile with Gentile?

So the Lady of the Lake's attendant priestesses easily morph into Laker Girls -- American style cheerleaders with Las Vegas bumps and grinds. Also added to the movie material is an obsession with Broadway precursors. When Dennis Galahad and the Lady appear in a low boat, its Viking lines aside, it doesn't take the lowered chandelier to remind us of "Phantom of the Opera." The number and other allusions touch on maybe a dozen other musicals -- "Company," "Fiddler," "West Side Story," you name it.

Very British is the obsession with puns, both verbal and visual. "Alms for the poor," chants a beggar, just as the stage happens to be littered with severed arms. "Hey!" someone yells, as a bale of hay trundles past. "It's a symbol" another insists in a typical argument, while a cymbal clangs.

Sharing the un-P.C. spotlight with chorines and Jews are the French, who come in for mercilessly British rubbishing, including a priceless dance corps of every imaginable French cliche. "I head butt you in the chest," says the Taunter, doubtless a soccer fan.

The only place I feel the show flags is its predictable finale -- I suppose that's part of the joke, but it does seem as though the creators (including director Mike Nichols and very busy choreographer Casey Nicholaw) ran out of ideas.

The set with its heavy Terry Gilliam influence is somewhat simpler than Broadway's, but that's no loss, since colorful slapdash grandeur is the name of the game.

Michael Siberry anchors the show with his bewildered and self-congratulatory Arthur, like a beefy head prefect in a second-rate prep school. Pia Glenn's Lady is a very showy diva, with a full range of modern musical styles. CMU grad Bradley Dean makes the most of the Galahad-Black Knight-Herbert's Father role -- he gives a master class in timing in instructing his two rent-a-guards.

There are others to praise, but really it's an ensemble show, so busy it's surprising only 20 actors turn up in the curtain call.

By the way, be warned that the seat for the audience participation bit changes at each performance, so don't pay exorbitantly for what you think is the "winning" ticket.

And yes, that is the voice of John Cleese playing the voice of God in Act 1, scene 9 -- though apparently a snippet of it was added by Hank Azaria on Broadway. You will hear other echoes of Cleese, Michael Palin, Idle, et al. -- it's built into the lines.

What fun to have these Python clones in town.