Even when it wasn’t her time to teach dance steps, Claudia Samano-Losada had trouble staying away from the Whidbey Playhouse over the past few months.

One of the choreographers working with the cast of “Monty Python’s Spamalot,” Samano-Losada enjoyed coming just to watch the silliness during rehearsals.

“To be honest, that is the only reason why I’m here more than I’m supposed to be because I need that laugh every day,” she said.

“Spamalot” opens Friday night, Feb. 6, at the playhouse, bringing to Oak Harbor a zany musical comedy that is an adaptation of the 1975 film, “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.”

Drawing inspiration from the movie that attracted a cult following, the musical comedy was wildly popular on Broadway and won the Tony Award for Best Musical of the 2004-2005 season.

Sue Riney and her husband Jim were first taken with the idea of bringing “Spamalot” to Oak Harbor after watching the musical in Seattle about seven years ago.

“It grabbed Jim and I,” said Sue Riney, who is the show’s producer and director, while her husband serves as technical director. “We could see that younger audiences enjoyed it. We try to appeal to the younger audience in Oak Harbor.”

And Riney thinks it might have been a good choice.

“It’s created a lot of general buzz,” she said. “That’s something we don’t always have.”

The preparation has certainly been unique since rehearsals started in October.

Riney opted to use four choreographers to work with a cast that, except for one member, had virtually no dance experience.

There are 18 numbers in Spamalot that have dance in them, requiring anything from tap, lyrical, jazz, Broadway and hip-hop moves.

“What I think is really amazing about this production is that Sue, to her credit, had the vision to split up the choreography, said Daunne Bacon Zinger, who joined Trent Oman, Wendy Rue and Samano-Losada as choreographers. “Kudos to Sue for recruiting and gaining additional choreography expertise because in a production like this, there are so many different styles of dance. To have one person do it, it’s exhausting, but it also limits the amount of styles.”

Such individual attention worked wonders.

“I’m not really a dancer,” said Matthew Woodcock, who makes his acting debut playing three different characters, including one who gets beheaded. “If they can teach me how to dance, they can teach anybody to dance.”

The pace of the show, which is a parody about the legend of King Arthur, is frantic.

Of the cast of 21, most have four to five costume changes to create characters such as the Knights of the Round Table, French Taunters, Knights of Ni, Showgirls and more.

“I have eight costume changes, and one of them I have less than a minute to do,” said Matt Benson, who must walk on stilts for one role, something he’d never done before the show.

“It does not stop,” said Jim Reynolds, who plays four roles. “We are on a dead run the whole show.”

The production features endless wacky humor, too, bringing back to life some of the most popular skits from the movie.

The challenges were plenty, including finding or creating unique props such as a stuffed cow, a massive Trojan rabbit, a rubber chicken, the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch and flexible fish for face slapping.

“There was a lot of Googling,” Sue Riney said.

There also was the matter of replicating tricky scenes such as the removal of four limbs of the Black Knight, played by Jim Castaneda, whose confidence never wanes despite his gruesome predicament.

“I was wondering how they’d pull off the Black Knight,” said Lukas D. Lowder, who plays Patsy.

The Rineys put their heads together and enlisted creative minds and dedicated volunteers to allow everything to come together.

Cassandra Woodcock tackled the role of costumer and has stitched together pieces from the costume warehouse, among others, ever since the cast was assembled.

Brian Shelly and Jim Riney constructed a two-story set built around the ability to bring the nearly 10-foot tall Trojan rabbit onto the stage.

Jim Riney was able to re-use a few of the props and costumes from Camelot, a musical he directed at the Whidbey Playhouse in 1989, the last time an Arthurian legend was on the playhouse stage.

John Fowlkes played a Knight in that production 26 years ago but pitched in this time by using buckets and other material to build helmets for the knights in Spamalot.

Fowlkes was one of many involved with comedy at the playhouse who wanted to contribute in some way to this production and be around the hilarity.

“This is one of those special casts,” said Nathan McCartney, who plays King Arthur, sharing the stage with his wife, Amanda McCartney, who plays the Lady of the Lake.

“It’s a great show. It’s funny. It’s goofy. And we still get a ‘get out of jail free’ card. This is ‘Spamalot.’ This is ‘Monty Python.’ So if something goes horribly wrong, it’s still really funny.”

Spamalot

“Monty Python’s Spamalot” will be performed Feb. 6-March 1 at the Whidbey Playhouse. The musical comedy, an adaptation of the film, “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” won a Tony Award for “Best Musical” in 2005. Oak Harbor’s Sue Riney is director and producer of the show, collaborating with her husband Jim Riney, the technical director. Performances are at 7:30 p.m. on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays; Sunday matinees are 2:30 p.m. Tickets are $20, except for a special $25 opening night ticket that includes appetizers and a cash bar. For ticket reservations, contact the box office at 360-679-2237 or go to the playhouse at 730 SE Midway Blvd., Oak Harbor. For more information, check the website at www.whidbeyplayhouse.com