We should have seen this coming: John Cleese has adapted his classic sitcom Fawlty Towers for the stage to debut on London's West End. Now audiences can see petty fascist and failed control freak hotelier Basil Fawlty fail in the flesh on the stage, although not played by Cleese. Cleese and his then-wife Connie Booth co-wrote all twelve episodes of the original Fawlty Towers together. He has adapted and combined three classic episodes into a new two-hour play which will open at the Apollo Theatre in London in May 2023. It stitches together "The Hotel Inspector," "The Germans," and "Communications Problems," the original series, into a single multi-pronged farce with "one huge finale."
In a statement released on Friday, Cleese said: "We've been involved in the casting process for some time, being constantly reminded of what a wealth of acting talent we have in Britain – sorting the very, very, very good from the merely very, very good. Finally, we assembled a top-class group of comedy actors."
The role of Basil will be played by Adam Jackson-Smith, and his indomitable wife Sybil will be played by Anna-Jane Casey. Hemi Yeroham will star as the hapless waiter Manuel and Victoria Fox has the role of hotel maid Polly, whose unwavering loyalty to the awful Basil and efforts to save his bacon can only be explained by the idea that she was in love with him, a thread never confronted during the original run of Fawlty Towers on the BBC. Who knows if that subplot will be addressed? We're assuming not.
The original twelve episodes of Fawlty Towers were broadcast on BBC Two in September 1975. In 2000, it was voted the best British programme of all time in a British Film Institute poll.
"The Germans" is one of the most famous, if not controversial, episodes of Fawlty Towers, where a concussed and delirious Fawlty fails to follow his own order, "Don't mention the war!" to a group of guests from Germany. The episode was temporarily removed from a BBC-owned streaming service in 2020 because it contains racial slurs. It was reinstated by UKTV with guidance and warnings highlighting "potentially offensive content and language." The episode has a scene in which the Major uses racist terms to retell an anecdote about the West Indies cricket team, where the whole point was to expose the doddering old man's racism. Cleese told the Age newspaper: "If you put nonsense words into the mouth of someone you want to make fun of, you're not broadcasting their views, you're making fun of them." Cleese has since criticised the BBC for their cowardice and vowed never to work with the broadcaster again.
Fawlty Towers begins previews on 4 May and has an official opening night on 15 May. It is directed by Caroline Jay Ranger, whose credits include Only Fools and Horses: The Musical and Monty Python Live. Meanwhile, Cleese and his daughter Camilla's upcoming sequel to the series is still in development.
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