An Idle moment with a Pythoneer

“I’m a lumberjack and I’m OK” ... “Always look on the bright side of life” ... “Nudge nudge, wink wink, say no more!”

If you’re a fan of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, you know the lines by heart. And that worked both for and against former Pythoneer Eric Idle as he concluded his “Greedy Bastard” tour at the Henry Fonda Theatre on Friday.

The brilliance of Monty Python was not merely the sketches but also the context -- a theater-of-the-absurd stream of consciousness that marked the troupe’s late-’60s through early-’70s BBC TV show and such big-screen ventures as “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” and “Monty Python’s Life of Brian.” Friday was more in the tradition of an English music hall revue, although the highbrow-lowbrow Python mix was in full flower with such bits as the Australian philosophy seminar.

The first half was a hodge-podge drawn from Python and various spinoffs, linked by topical jokes. Idle is a better raconteur than stand-up comic, though, and the second half was much stronger as he wove an autobiographical narrative around illustrative sketches and songs. We got colorful tales of his beginnings (“When I was born in England in World War II, Adolf Hitler was trying to kill me”), his Dickensian school days and his affectionate recollections of fellow Pythons and longtime friend George Harrison.

Musical director John Du Prez kept things moving nicely, and support players Peter Crabbe and Jennifer Julian gamely filled various roles, although it was clear that there was only one Python on stage.

And then there was the encore bucket -- a garbage can into which audience members were encouraged to make fiduciary contributions if they desired an encore. At show’s end, Idle announced that the booty would be donated to Harrison’s Material World Charitable Foundation, noting that he’s a “failed greedy bastard.” Say no more.