I was awed by Sara Ramirez when I saw her in her Tony-award winning performance as The Lady of the Lake in the original production of Spamalot, but that didn’t stop me from wanting to see Meghan Murphy, aka Big Red, in the same role. It was my main reason for going to the Mercury Theater production.
Murphy makes the role her own, commanding the stage, not only with her talent, but also with her brash, over-the-top playfulness that the director obviously must have encouraged, to the delight of the audience. Murphy’s scatting during The Diva’s Lament had the audience roaring for more.
There is no clear-cut origin of scatting, though apparently Louis Armstrong’s recording studio misadventure, when he dropped the lyric sheet to Heebie Jeebies and started improvising, led to its popularity.
There’s also no information, at least that I could find, about the origin of the term scatting. It seems like it must relate to scat’s other definition, that is feces, but I couldn’t find anything to suggest that conclusion.
In searching for references, I did, however, find a webpage that cites 11 literary fart jokes, ranging from Dante to Twain to Salinger. And that’s without mention of Judd Apatow, or the Frenchmen’s fart jokes in Spamalot.
I don’t know whether the Frenchmen throwing a cow as a weapon from their castle is supposed to be a continuation of the scatological humor (I wouldn’t doubt it), but it is well-documented that cows have been accused of contributing to climate change, though not, as some think, through farting, but rather, as NASA tells us, through belching.
Not to worry, however, as scientists are hard at work on ways to reduce the methane produced by cows, which should keep the EPA from shutting down future productions of Spamalot, or Gypsy, with its moo cow.