Lovers of Monty Python will find everything as they would wish in the touring production of Spamalot at the New Theatre this week.

The Knights of Ni get their shrubbery (though hold back on their demand for a second); the Black Knight is — or at least ends up — armless; and the taunting French soldiers do indeed “fart in your [our] general direction” from their battlemented redoubt.

Since this last encounter encourages some of the loudest laughs of the evening, one might regret that the vituperative Frogs don’t get a second crack at King Arthur and his knights — as they do in the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail, whose plot is closely followed in the musical. The “perfidious English mousedropping hoarders” and “tiny-brained wipers of other people’s bottoms” must think themselves very lucky.

First seen in 2005, Spamalot has proved a huge success for writer Eric Idle — part, of course, of the original Python team — and composer John Du Prez, a former Trevelyan Scholar at Christ Church who has lived for much of his life in Oxfordshire. Its popularity proves that today’s audiences have an appetite for silliness as keen as that of their forebears who lapped up the Pythons’ ludicrous conceits in their 1970s heyday. I was one such but now begin to wonder — on the evidence of this show — if the joke isn’t wearing a bit thin.

It certainly works well as parody, with some amusing digs at the conventions of the stage musical. The best of these is The Song That Goes Like This, which gets a belting performance on its first outing by the Lady of the Lake (Amy Nuttall) and Sir Galahad (Simon Lipkin). By the time of its second airing as a love duet, her attentions have fixed upon King Arthur — played with considerable force and dignity by Marcus Brigstock (right) — and the lady has transmogrified into Guinevere.

Before their happy union (in a colourful wedding that highlights the pantomimic tone of the show) we have heard the sorrowful Arthur lamenting his solitude in the full-company (!) number I’m All Alone. This does not go down well with his inseparable companion Patsy (Todd Carty, hamming expertly).

It falls to Patsy to lead the performance of the best-known number of the evening. But robbed of its context — the toe-tapping crucifixion scene at the close of The Life of Brian — Always Look on the Bright Side loses much of its comic bite.

Directed by Christopher Luscombe Spamalot continues until Saturday. 0844 8471588 (www.newtheatreoxford.org.uk).