Theatre Review: Fawlty Towers

You have to be pretty bold to perform a treasured British sitcom on the stage. While in a conventional play you may get a couple of audience members with a fuzzy recollection of Ian McKellen’s Macbeth or Maggie Smith’s Hedda Gabler, with something like Fawlty Towers you could end up performing the material in front of people like me, who grew up joyously watching repeats of the twelve-episode series, and who have memorised almost every line and subtle nuance of the original actors’ performances.

You might say it’s hard to go wrong with such fantastic material; each thirty-minute episode of the seventies comedy is brilliantly scripted, and plays out like a full-length farce in compact form. At first, though, I questioned the choice of episodes that Encore! Performing Arts had chosen to perform. A Touch of Class is, to my mind, the weakest one of all, whereas Communication Problems is firmly my favourite. The Hotel Inspectors, meanwhile, sits somewhere in the middle, leaving us with a mixed bag. But it soon became clear that these had been chosen because of the relative simplicity of staging them – they all mostly take place in the lobby, the bar and the dining room of the hotel, which were all convincingly portrayed with an extremely effective and well-designed set (even if some of the scenes in the dining room got a bit cramped).

Graham Buchanan, playing Basil Fawlty, undoubtedly had the biggest challenge of the large ensemble cast. He had some titanic comedic shoes to fill, and he was unlikely to ever match up to the great John Cleese (who is currently beating up his car as Fawlty in a Specsavers advert). Nonetheless, he gave it a good go, and pulled off a pretty convincing Cleese impression, getting plenty of laughs as the repressed, frantic, unbelievably rude hotel owner. He did have a tendency to overact in places though, camping up the role for additional laughs and subsequently looking rather pantomime-y.

Manuel, played by Adam Guest, was an excellent comic foil; the scene in Communication Problems, where a beleaguered Basil tries to explain to the linguistically-challenged Manuel the concept of pretending not to know something, was a highlight. The supporting cast also had some terrific showings; Ross Lowe and Sandy Lane, who played obnoxious guests Mr. Hutchinson and Mrs. Richards respectively, deserve special mentions. Both had superb comic timing and had clearly studied their roles – certain other cast members didn’t appear to have ever watched an episode of Fawlty Towers.

The show got off to a slow start with A Touch of Class –  it was lacking in pace and energy, not helped by the frequent blackouts and awkward blocking. But as they moved on to the superior episodes, the cast seemed to start to enjoy themselves more and to meet the comedic potential of the increasingly daft and farcical situations. I missed little touches from the originals (like Basil’s agonised wail when he stands alone behind reception having lost his hard-won £75, or the blustering, cheerful senility of the Major), but sometimes you have to let go of these little preoccupations. Overall, it was fantastic to see Fawlty Towers so lovingly re-constructed.

Fawlty Towers is performed by Encore! Performing Arts at Nottingham Arts Theatre from Monday  22 – Sunday 27 February 2016

Nottingham Arts Theatre website