Fawlty Towers
Struggling to work my way through the expectant crowd waiting to enter the auditorium of the Theatre Royal I found myself idly wondering how many of these people would have seen Fawlty Towers when it was first broadcast. I come from a generation for which the Norwegian Blue, Nudge Nudge and Spam were the common currency of the playground, so of course I would have made a point of catching a new show from the Pythons. Lord knows, I sat through Rutland Weekend Television waiting for it to be funny. Famously, there were only ever twelve, intricate farces that revolved around misunderstanding, duplicitousness and snobbery. The brilliance of the scripts written by Cleese and Booth was that despite Basil's awful prejudices and incandescent rages, we had a sneaking regard for this point of view. Setting out a template for Brent and Partridge that followed here was an antihero we could, at least sort of, empathise with.
Cleese has taken three of the best episodes and, with considerable artfulness, woven their plots into the events of a single day. Together with Basil, Sybil, Manuel and Polly, we are reacquainted with the pedantic Mr Hutchinson, the deaf Mrs Richards and, of course, the Germans. What we inevitably lose is the steady, meticulous plotting that leads up to the cathartic chaos of The Hotel Inspectors, Communication Problems and The Germans. Unusually for a situation comedy, each episode of the series was a self-contained tale of misfortune and misery, often told with markedly different tones. Here we see the collision of those worlds in a frantic mash up of the series's greatest hits.
It's an odd device, to my mind. Audience members unfamiliar with the series will have, I imagine, found the interwoven plots confusing, while us fan boys have to mentally set aside what "really happened". However, the evening was less about coherent plotting and more about nostalgic reminiscence. Greg Haste's Mr Hutchinson isn't nearly as annoying as the exasperating Bernard Cribbins, so doesn't really deserve his fate. Dawn Buckley's Mrs Richards isn't given the same rigid, oblivious certainty that made Joan Sanderson such a believable old trout. Yet both win applause for reminding us of what was. The action is propelled along hastily until the next memorable line kicks in. I have already mentioned the Germans twice, but I think I got away with it.
Buckley was one of four understudies stepping up to fill major parts, requiring Josie Brightwell to wear an unconvincing wig, filling the vacated role of Miss Gatsby. Buckley made a pretty good stab at Mrs Richards, and while imperiousness was largely replaced by shouting a lot, she was clearly having a fine old time. Equally accomplished was Ben Jacobson, striking just the right world-weary tone as Mr Walt, a character usually performed by Adam Elliot. Elliot had the onerous task of stepping into the considerable shoes of Danny Bayne, an actor widely praised for his version of Basil.
Elliot deserves to be cut some slack, given he presumably hadn't had the chance to grow into the role, but the character is so central to everything that goes on, this was an undercooked Basil. Imagine Mike Wozniak taking on the role and you'd get a good impression of a performance that was sardonic, animated but fell short of the splenetic fury needed to make sense of Basil's Manic misdemeanours. And, ultimately, therein lies the rub.
If a TV show stars John Cleese, Prunella Scales and Andrew Sachs, and has guests such as Cribbins and Sanderson, what cast could possibly compete with a memory that cast such a long shadow. Mia Austen and Hemi Yeroham were perfectly adequate, but no substitute for the real thing. The sole exception, and there's little doubt it's due to his own comedy credentials, was Paul Nicholas, as the Major. Wisely deviating from Ballard Berkeley's mannerisms, he stole every scene he was in. It was a pity we didn't see more of him.
It should be said that a capacity audience at the Royal obviously had a great time ticking off the extraordinary number of quotable quips that peppered the series. To misquote the contemporaneous comedian Eric Morecambe, we got all the best lines, just not necessarily in the right order. Liz Ascroft's lovingly recreated set was an absolute delight and one should be thankful there's still elbow room for the spoken word in a theatre world so dominated by musicals. But if you stop for a moment and imagine a brand new thirteenth episode - wouldn't that have been really something?
