Hello, Fawlty Towers?

If you’re anything like me, gentle reader, you quake a little at the prospect of seeing a stage show based on a TV show. I have gloomy memories of seeing the stage production of Yes Prime Minister and the recent stage adaptation of Drop the Dead Donkey was only moderately entertaining. I genuinely hated the Menier Chocolate Factory’s 2009 production of Victoria Wood’s Talent as the two main actors simply did impersonations of Victoria Wood and Julie Walters as they performed in the original TV play; and it only made you want to see the real Victoria Wood and Julie Walters. So I was in two minds about how wise it was to spend a theatrical evening at Fawlty Towers.

I Know!!!…

Those twelve classic TV episodes are unassailably cherished in many people’s memories, so it was an undoubted risk on John Cleese’s part to adapt the show for the stage. It hit the West End with huge success in May 2024 and now it is touring the UK and Ireland right through to August 2026. The show is a compilation of three episodes, The Hotel Inspectors, The Germans and Communication Problems, with the odd nod to a couple of other stories. I’m not going to tell you what they are all about because I’m sure you haven’t been living under a rock for the past fifty years.

Polly squares up to the Major

The theatrical Fawlty Towers is massively more entertaining than any of those three productions I mentioned earlier. The adaptation is excellent, combining the three stories into one cohesive narrative, and the staging emphasises the farcical nature of the production; Feydeau would have loved it. It’s performed with tremendous conviction and manages to recreate the original with huge affection as well as putting its own subtle individual identity on it. Wisely, it doesn’t try to end with any form of resolution to the stories, just a chaotic tableau of everything going wrong, which perfectly encapsulates Fawltyland.

I’m sorry, he’s from Barcelona

Liz Ascroft’s breathtakingly impressive set occupies the entire stage, with the hotel reception, the dining room, the stairs up, and a top floor bedroom as well as cleverly showing us the hotel frontage and that persistently unreliable hotel name sign. The costumes are totally faithful to the original series, as is the incidental theme music. My only quibble with the overall production is that we hear that theme way too often during the course of the show; I can only imagine that if they were live musicians, Basil would have headbutted them in exasperation and snipped their strings before the evening was out.

Papers arrived yet, Fawlty?

There is a separate question to be asked: fifty years on, does it still work as comedy? Some people maintain – and indeed John Cleese is one of them – that comedy has been ruined by the wokerati and you can’t say funny things anymore. This is of course nonsense; you just have to be better at it. What certainly stands the test of time is the immensely funny characterisations: the belligerent, bombastic, oleaginous host, his coarse, braying, bullying wife, the demanding customer who only speaks circuitously, the forgetful old fool living in the past and the impatient deaf old woman who won’t turn her hearing aid on.

Don’t mention the war

Where, for me, it becomes less appealing is with its approach to foreigners, primarily the treatment of the idiotic Spanish waiter, and its carefree portrayal of violence, both domestic and against the staff and customers. In the 1970s, the TV series absolutely captured the zeitgeist with the British continued uneasy relationship with Germany, which was immaculately realised with Basil’s largely unintentional harassment of his German guests. Today, that whole Goebbels, Goering and Hitler funny walk routine just makes me cringe. But I must be honest, there were sections of the audience who found that completely hysterical.

He’s got a gun…

When you’re adapting such a well-known original work, it’s vital that we believe in the actors’ characterisations, and here the production is extremely successful. I hardly recognised Danny Bayne from his excellent performances in Grease and Saturday Night Fever, playing such a completely different kind of character, but he is again extremely good. His dancer training really allows him to convey Basil’s physicality and his fluidity of movement; bouncing back from behind the reception desk, being knocked out by the moose head, and the goosestep are performed with extraordinary precision and skill.

Hope there’s nothing trivial wrong with you dear

Mia Austen absolutely nails Sybil’s ruthless streak, those piercingly angry eyes burrowing into Basil’s soul whenever she gets a chance; and she’s also great on the phone, with her suggestive cackle and that trademark I know… Waitress Polly never had that much of a characterisation in the TV programme, perhaps just being the lone voice of sanity, so there isn’t much for Joanne Clifton to get her teeth into, but it’s a sunny and nicely comic performance. Hemi Yeroham has a difficult task to make Manuel a believable person as the original was written as so much of a caricature, but his comic timing is immaculate.

I know nothing

For me, the scene-stealing performance of the show is Paul Nicholas as the Major, because it’s the least hysterical and most realistic characterisation, playing the whole thing straight when everything around him cascades into nonsense. He delivers his killer lines beautifully, genuinely makes you think he is talking to a moose, and is the embodiment of a loveably forgetful old duffer. There’s also terrific support from Jemma Churchill as the cantankerous Mrs Richards and Greg Haiste as the troublesome Mr Hutchinson.

…and curtain!

Very nostalgic but with a creative twist, this is a strong production with immense attention to detail. A suitable show for both Fawlty Towers fans and those who know nothing about it. There are hardly any tickets left for the rest of the week, so you’d better get in quick if you want to see it!

Production photos by Hugo Glendenning

Four They’re Jolly Good Fellows!