The show (or “the live show,” as the program specifies) has been directed by Mr. Idle, the man behind the cash-cow Monty Python tribute musical “Spamalot.” The O2 production has been designed by Mr. Gilliam with a flair that suggests Salvador Dalí let loose on the Ziegfeld Follies.

The Pythons’ longtime favorite female accomplice, Carol Cleveland, pops up, occasionally and bravely in showgirl attire. A limber chorus line of young’uns helps fill the vast stage, in flashy, high-kicking numbers, choreographed by Arlene Phillips, that I would call Las Vegas parodies if Las Vegas hadn’t co-opted parodying itself long ago. (John Du Prez is the musical director.)

The songs are oldies, though they’ve been tweaked — and amplified, in every sense of the word. The papal “Every Sperm Is Sacred” hymn features nuns and cardinals stripping to their undies while a phalluslike candy-striped cannon ejaculates soap bubbles. The sketch in which Mr. Idle portrays a prurient pub crawler who speaks entirely in innuendo (“Is your wife a ‘goer’?”) segues into that actor (or his recorded voice) performing a rap variation on the same material.

Oft-quoted material is delivered by the septuagenarian Pythons with the obliging, slightly weary good humor of beloved great-uncles being asked once more to tell that same old story. It is a fact of life that if you live long enough, you’ll see iconoclasts become institutions.

Image Michael Palin, at left, and Eric Idle in one of their sketches. Credit... Dave J Hogan/Getty Images — AFP

The show acknowledges but doesn’t dwell on that idea. Its first self-contained sketch is the Four Yorkshiremen bit, in which old duffers (of an age the Pythons have now reached) reminisce competitively about how hard they had it growing up. An opening video montage shows the disembodied head of Mr. Chapman, styled as a celestial planet, being kicked into the cosmos.

But the Grim Reaper, the dominating character in the film “Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life” (1983), makes only a cameo appearance in the second act. The Pythons aren’t here to churn up shadows but to comfort us with the fact of their having survived in what appears to be good health, with the need that all of us have to keep paying the bills.