Native songman Hailing from Houlton, Lewis Cleale heard the music, followed it and now finds himself in ‘Monty Python’s Spamalot’ on Broadway

When you’re starring in a Broadway musical that features flying cows, vicious rabbits and rude Frenchmen, it helps to have an oddball sense of humor.

In the case of Lewis Cleale, who plays Sir Dennis Galahad, The Black Knight and Prince Herbert’s father in “Monty Python’s Spamalot,” being a Houlton native doesn’t hurt.

“I’m happy to be from Maine, but I’m a lot weirder than everybody else,” he said recently from the 1800 Federal-style home he’s restoring in the Berkshires, where he stays on his nights off. “A lot of us are very eccentric. It’s an interesting place, a tiny little place where a lot of interesting people came out of.”

Cleale, 40, attributes that to two things: the long winters and the fact that many of his high school teachers came from Ricker College, a liberal arts school in Houlton with a reputation for high-quality performing arts. When the college closed in 1978, many of its faculty members found their way into the public school system. In addition, Houlton High’s choral director at the time was Robert Bahr, who is known for his work with the Bangor Symphony Orchestra and the Grand Auditorium in Ellsworth.

“We just had this great cultural upbringing,” Cleale recalled. “Sure, sports were big, but music was really important to us.”

Though Cleale went on to study business at the University of Miami in Florida, music was never far from his mind. He considered attending law school, but after graduation, he chose to attend the Burt Reynolds Institute for Theatre Training instead.

“Music was really the primary draw, but I also discovered I could act, along the way,” Cleale said.

TV commercials and a role in a European touring production of “Oklahoma!” were among his credits before his 1995 Broadway debut in “Swinging on a Star.” He earned a Drama Desk Award nomination for the role. A dozen years later, Cleale speaks with the confidence and wisdom of experience. In the time that has passed, he has appeared on Broadway in “Once Upon a Mattress” and “Amour,” in the national tours of “Sunset Boulevard,” and “South Pacific” and the Las Vegas run of “Mamma Mia!,” a musical based on the songs of Abba.

In 2006, he returned to New York to do a concert with Christine Ebersole. Within two weeks, he was cast as the first replacement for Tony Award-nominated Christopher Sieber. The play, which is “lovingly ripped off from the film [‘Monty Python and the Holy Grail’],” has a cultlike following.

“It’s not unlike ‘Mamma Mia!'” Cleale said. “‘Spamalot’ is kind of the same thing, but instead of knowing all the words to the songs, the audience knows all the words to the scenes. … It attracts high school kids, even girls, and wives don’t have any trouble getting their husbands there.”

When King Arthur arrives, people start applauding because they know Cleale’s Black Knight is about to have his arms and legs cut off.

“It’s fun,” Cleale said, laughing.

It’s also hard work. At 40, he goes to the gym five or six days a week. He appears in eight shows a week. He needs eight hours of sleep. He can’t go out late at night. He lives like a monk. He never gets 48 hours off. Ever. And by the time the curtain falls on Sunday, he can’t imagine ever doing “Spamalot” again. Still, by Tuesday afternoon, he’s ready to go.

“I love it,” he said. “It makes me happy. It’s hard work, but it’s a great way to make a living.”

He said the hard work comes between jobs, when he’s running from audition to audition. And in the era of “High School Musical,” he expects his Broadway roles to dwindle over the next 15 years.

“We don’t really value age and experience anymore,” he said.

He’s making hay while the sun shines in “Spamalot.” And though he doesn’t get much time off, he takes the train to his home in the Berkshires whenever he can.

“It makes me feel like I’m in Maine,” he said. “I kind of have the best of both worlds.”

When he finally gets a vacation – he has been working nonstop for the last 41/2 years – he’ll come home to see his parents and sisters, who have since moved to southern Maine. His niece now teaches music in Old Town, so he’ll probably head north on I-95, though not as far north as his “home base” of Houlton.

“It’s nice to visit.”

BDN writer Alicia Anstead contributed to this report.