Posted in: Current News, Pop Culture, TV | Tagged: fawlty towers, john cleese, london, west end

John Cleese, On Why Fawlty Towers Works Better On The Stage (Video)

John Cleese led a packed media scrum this morning for the launch of Fawlty Towers, the London West End end play. And I was there.

I just found myself on Shaftesbury Avenue at the Apollo Theatre, in London's West End to get up close and personal with John Cleese. As in, I am in the second-to-front row, the stage is before me, and it looks like the familiar set of the TV sitcom Fawlty Towers, recorded fifty years ago, except a little by way of Escher. This is very intentional, according to John Cleese, who takes to the stage with the cast of the new theatrical version of Fawlty Towers, getting its first preview performance this Saturday. But I have just been given a preview of a preview, two scenes from the play, both familiar but played exquisitely.

Fawlty Towers has the reputation of being the world's best sitcom, two six-episode series in the mid-seventies, three years apart, written by John Cleese and Connie Booth, and it owes its origins to the theatrical farces that John Cleese went to see when young. And to some degree, this is full circle for Fawlty Towers,able to take advantage of aspects of stage farce denied to television viewers.

Because on the stage, Fawlty Towers fills its space. With no camera crew or editor, the audience is free to wander around the stage with their view and catch the hotel customers as they react to the antics of Basil, Sybil, Manuel and Polly, they have their own rich life story playing out and the audience is as welcome to follow them as they are the main action. One of the hotel rooms above, a mezzanine, allows parallel action in different locations, the audience able to choose which they follow. John Cleese talked about how the audience are a participatory member in any farce, and that has been played up in this adaptation. John Cleese has, however, had to factor audience laughter in. On the TV show, he instructed actors to talk through laughter as they were all miked up, that won't be the case here, and the show may extend it's planned length. He also talked about how the cast have to bed a show in, learn where the bigger-than-expected laughs will hit, and where the mere titters fall, so they can ride the audience.

The Fawlty Towers stage show takes three classic episodes, The Hotel Inspector, Communication Problems and The Germans and threads them through each other rather than happening one after the other, and then a new ending that draws all the threads together.

The two scenes shown today stick in the mind from the original. The complaining hotel guest, originally played by Bernard Cribbins, is a real treat, loud and brazen, before being throttled by Basil and dragged out with Manuel taking the legs. Everything is fast and furious, there are no room for cuts. The actors are performing a ballet here of wrongly ordered food, surprise bottles of wine, and ripped-up omelettes. But they aren't impersonating the originals, though Adam Jackson-Smith has just the right growl that emerges from under Basil's moustache, and Anna Jane-Casey has just the right lilting tone for a public-facing Sybil, away from the face she shows her husband.

I'm seeing the full play next week (tickets bought ages ago), and this totally whetted my appetite and revived what feels like a long-lost love. I also bumped into Vaughan after the show on the street, and we just totally geeked out over what he had just done after being dropped ain't last minute to host the media preview but seemingly having prepared for this his whole life. He also told his Dad that he could get him tickets, only to be told "It's a bit bloody late now, we've already booked. Me too. Python geeks, we get everywhere.

So yes, I just had an audience with John Cleese and I am still shaking. You can watch a Tiktokked take on the Q&A below… I'll try getting it on YouTube later.

@thatrichjohnstonJohn Cleese and the cast of Fawlty Towers Q&A at the Apollo Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue London's West End part two♬ original sound – Rich Johnston

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@thatrichjohnstonJohn Cleese and the cast of Fawlty Towers Q&A at the Apollo Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue London's West End part three♬ original sound – Rich Johnston

@thatrichjohnstonJohn Cleese and the cast of Fawlty Towers Q&A at the Apollo Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue London's West End part four♬ original sound – Rich Johnston

@thatrichjohnstonJohn Cleese and the cast of Fawlty Towers Q&A at the Apollo Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue London's West End part five♬ original sound – Rich Johnston

@thatrichjohnstonJohn Cleese and the cast of Fawlty Towers Q&A at the Apollo Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue London's West End part six♬ original sound – Rich Johnston

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