MARCH MADNESS.(Spamalot)(Theater Review)

Silliness is an assertion of youthfulness, a playful raspberry blown at everything that weighs us down--history, theology, psychology, and, especially, mortality. If you're looking for a theme to the inspired antics of "Spamalot" (at the Shubert)--a musical that is, according to the marquee, "lovingly ripped off" from the movie "Monty Python and the Holy Grail"--you'll find it on a twenty-five-dollar T-shirt that's for sale in the lobby: "i'm not dead yet . . .," it says. The catchphrase, which is intoned throughout the evening by plague-ridden corpses, by dragooned soldiers, and even by an amputee knight, is an impudent anthem of comedy: an act of defiance, not ...