by Cindy McGlynn

It's no surprise that production designer Tim Hatley is a card. A lark. A laugh-and-a-half.

As costume and set designer for Monty Python's Tony-award winning musical, he'd have to be at least capable of a good chuckle to bring the much loved movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail to life on stage. I recently caught up with him over the phone at this London home, to discuss the touring production of Spamalot.

Are you a Python nut who can recite everything word for word?

No I wouldn't say I knew all the words... I'm a fan, but I've never really been that type of fan.

How do you remake a low-budget movie into a high-budget musical?

Well, I never ever sort of thought we had a budget. Good design and good theatre come from the spirit of the piece, not the budget. Also, whenever you have a budget it's never ever enough. I do some small theatre in London plus and I did production design on the Clive Owen film Closer, and no amount ever seems to be enough.

The nature of the thing is that to do anything at all costs a fortune. So, I try to think about what we need to tell the story. I try to design it economically. For theatre, you realize you have one space, so you try to be humourous with the design. And we tried to be quite humble with it.

With Spamalot, there are moments where I want it to look like we've got a fortune, like when they go to Camelot. And that's the joke. Here's this humble little set and then the joke is we've got all this money for Camelot. For three minutes and then it goes away again.

I've always felt that we had to be slightly half-assed about it. That was always a priority. With the greatest respect to the American side, who would always be saying, "we can do that with hydraulics," and I'd be saying: "it's funnier if we push it out on wheels."

In America, it's cheaper to use hydraulics, because of the costs of your unions. In England, we have a reverse situation. I come from a very half-assed world of low budget theatre.

What are some of the production differences between the Monty Python and the Holy Grail film and the stage production of Spamalot?

They had a ludicrously low budget for that film and that's the great thing about it. There are things that you can only do on film and that you can only do on stage.

The killer rabbit is a good example. In the films it's a bunny flying through the air - sort of magic really, and it was all done with film effects.

For the stage, we reduced it to a hand puppet. Three of them, actually, though the audience doesn't know that. A cute white one who eventually becomes one with great big teeth. And he's literally just thrown at the actor who has a trick costume with a head that flies off. It's so low budget and low tech that it is hilarious.

That's part of the joke of Python. To laugh at the obvious.

When Tim the Enchanter comes, we've got him on wires and they're clearly visible. And the script goes: "Who are you who hangs in the air without strings or visible supporting devices?"

What is the touring show like?

I think it's better than Broadway. All the costumes are absolutely the same, but we've had a chance to revisit the design. There was some last-minute design and a few things we weren't quite sure would work, but it turned out that the half-assed nature of it was our friend. There were certain elements of scenery, however, that I've aesthetically improved upon and I think it's even better, now.