Fawlty Towers The Play – Reviews Round-up

"Hugely entertaining blast of nostalgia"

"I’ve watched every episode a dozen times so had my doubts. But this deft reworking at the Apollo theatre in London is immensely satisfying"

"I’m pleased to report that this genial condensing of three episodes delivers a hugely entertaining blast of unadorned nostalgia."

"Besides, seeing a live version does make you appreciate how much of the writing relies on deft comic timing. We know exactly what is going to happen to the expensive vase that Fawlty holds in his hand at the end of “Communication Problems”, the classic encounter with a guest who is hard of hearing, but it’s still immensely satisfying to see the sequence of misunderstandings that will send it crashing to the ground."

"At the preview I attended, the director Caroline Jay Ranger (who also worked on the Monty Python London arena show in 2014) could have pushed the tempo a few notches harder. And Fawlty’s final meltdown, taken from the inspector’s episode, doesn’t quite come off. But that is nitpicking. In the programme notes Cleese drops a hint that a stage sequel could be in the offing. I’d like a Waldorf salad, please."

"John Cleese sitcom revival is the funniest show in town"

"John Cleese has turned his classic BBC sitcom Fawlty Towers into a fantastic theatre farce in London's West End"

"By not adding anything new or making any concessions to fashionable sensibilities, John Cleese has kept the scripts largely intact to the extent that some audience members cannot refrain from shouting out the punchlines before the cast."

"Director Caroline Jay Ranger ensures that the comedy timing is immaculate. Consequently, Basil’s various calamities appear both familiar and freshly minted"

"It has the accumulating momentum of farce because it is farce and the cast play it to the hilt, particularly Fox who channels Connie Booth with supernatural ease and Rachel Izen as the demanding Mrs Richards. But it wouldn’t work as well without a perfect Basil and Jackson-Smith is well nigh perfect."

"John Cleese has recreated the magic"

"I went in sceptical - and emerged two hours later, giddily and delightfully weak from laughing"

"The slickness of Cleese’s new script is crucial, leaving no suggestion of much-loved material simply being dumped on a stage and left to fend for itself."

"Her [Caroline Jay Ranger] super-smooth production, in which the jaunty theme music receives a warm round of applause before a single word has even been spoken, ensures that it is a pleasure to revisit these perfectly sculpted characters and situations once again."

"Integral to the success of this enterprise is the fact that the actors do not simply offer hollow impersonations of Basil, Sybil and the rest. They flesh the parts out plumply, while confidently providing all the tics and traits that we have come to know and love so well. Adam Jackson-Smith is exquisite as Basil"

"At a brisk two hours including interval, there is no chance of the show outstaying its welcome, unlike some of the hotel guests."

"Shamelessly recycled, fifty-year-old comic material it may be. But as shamelessly recycled 50-year-old comic material goes, John Cleese and Connie Booth’s stage replica of their classic TV comedy, Fawlty Towers, is still very good fun."

"It’s such a high-quality copy of the 1975 original that if you look closely, you might even find it says ‘Made In China’ on the bottom. Fawlty Towers purists will be relieved to learn there is nothing new to see here. Instead, this is a tightly wrought highlights package, distilling the fire drill fiasco, the wall-mounted moose debacle, and the fateful fiver secretly bet on the horse Dragonfly."

"Adam Jackson-Smith is a faultless avatar of Basil, down to the long moustache muffling his sotto voce sarcasm. He leaps adroitly to attention at Sybil’s shrieking threats to his manhood (‘you’ll have to sew them back on first…’), but he’s also supple enough to do the swivelling, head-bandaged goose step for the bewildered Germans."

"I had my doubts. I was wrong"

"The beloved British sitcom comes to the stage with love and razor focus— it’s hilarious"

"What we have here, though, is wowingly skilful. It’s an uncanny exercise in nostalgia for those who know the two series from 1975 and 1979 better than they know their own family. And, the one consideration that really matters, it is too funny to quibble too long about its provenance."

"As said grown man, Basil, the irascible Torquay hotelier forever making things worse as he tries to find himself some peace, Adam Jackson-Smith is stunning. This aspirational Little Englander manages to be almost entirely Cleese-like in his voice, long-levered body language, elastic pratfalls and sense of urgency. Yet somehow he doesn’t just come across as second-hand goods."

"At my weekend matinee I saw some children in front of me go from restless to entranced too. This stuff still works. And it is done here with love as well as a laser focus. It is nothing I haven’t seen before, but it made me laugh a lot."

"Comedy history repeats itself as stage farce"

"John Cleese’s transposition of his TV sitcom to the theatre has pitch perfect performances, but it never quite becomes a play"

"If the performances in this revamp of the Torquay hotel sitcom aren’t impersonations per se, they’re near as dammit. But they’re very good ones, and audiences who already love the material (most of them, let’s face it) will not be disappointed. That’s no mean achievement."

"Jackson-Smith even masters Cleese-alike physical humour, making a great comic virtue of his lanky body, prompting spontaneous applause when breaking out in a goose-step in front of his German hotel guests. Alongside him, Anna-Jane Casey is every inch the “tyrant queen” as Sybil"

"If you’re not always laughing, you’re admiring the comic architecture, whose brilliance is laid even more bare onstage than onscreen."

"Nostalgic fun for fans – but the original’s still the thing"

"John Cleese has welded together three vintage episodes to form one fairly seamless, indisputably funny evening – with an elegiac edge"

"Laughter, applause, delighted recognition. Only a curmudgeon – perhaps the type that causes bother at hotel receptions – would find grounds for annoyance and complaint at Fawlty Towers arriving in the West End"

"Directed at a spirited lick by Caroline Jay Ranger on a split-level 70s period set, with theme-music intact, it’s wall to wall nostalgia and copper-bottomed mirth. Even so, and despite the live-event bonus of different generations coming together, as they once gathered round the box, to watch it as one, I can’t avoid noting that the show falls far short of its peerless source material."

"This is the handing-on of the baton by those who were there when the show was young. And every vein-popping, limb-bending, goose-stepping bout of maniacal behaviour from Jackson-Smith as the immortal Fawlty is a kind of elegiac homage."

"John Cleese’s stage adaptation of his classic ’70s sitcom is a well-crafted replica that brings nothing new to the table"

"From Liz Ascroft’s detailed, 1970s-in-aspic set design – encompassing the titular Torquay hotel’s reception, dining room and an upstairs guest room – to the elaborate coiffure of Basil’s wife, Sybil (Anna-Jane Casey), Caroline Jay Ranger’s production leans so heavily on nostalgia, it’s amazing that it doesn’t crash through the stage. Ranger has form in turning iconic British TV shows that live partly in people’s rose-tinted memories into theatre: she directed ‘Only Fools and Horses The Musical’ a few years ago."

"... some of these gags – when shorn from the dusty gender politics that Cleese makes no attempt to update here – are funny, from the dining-room table lottery of ‘The Hotel Inspectors’, to the escalating confusion over the fire alarm drill in ‘The Germans’, to Basil’s buffoonish xenophobia in the same storyline. But, crucially, these already all exist in the TV series. We’re left anticipating old laughs rather than being surprised by new ones. You will have seen this show before you even take your seat."

"Energetic and loyal adaptation of Britain's greatest ever sitcom"

"John Cleese’s ragefully impotent Torquay hotelier Basil Fawlty is uncannily reincarnated by Adam Jackson-Smith"

"The lines, the laughs, even the accents and intonations of the greatest British sitcom ever, Fawlty Towers, are present and correct in this efficient and energetic stage adaptation, but it’s an oddly soulless affair."

"John Cleese’s ragefully impotent Torquay hotelier Basil Fawlty is uncannily reincarnated by Adam Jackson-Smith. We delight in his barely edited 1970s rudeness, his hubristic comeuppances, his abuse of hapless Catalan waiter Manuel… but it feels like an exercise in zombie nostalgia."

"The scripted and visual gags are great throughout but the tumbling avalanche of misunderstandings between Basil, a deaf female guest, and the uncomprehending Manuel in the latter is a sublime piece of writing."

"... I sat in the Apollo chuckling along, admiring the writing and the gutsiness of the actors, but also wondering if there were any artistic rather than purely commercial justification for this stage adaptation."

"Nostalgia trip back to a hotel of hilarious horrors"

"John Cleese faithfully adapts his classic TV sitcom for the stage at the Apollo Theatre, London "

"Does this stage version, crafted by Cleese by splicing three episodes together (“Hotel Inspectors”, “The Germans” and “Communication Problems”), find anything fresh in the set-up? No, is the answer. Which is not to say that Fawlty Towers: The Play isn’t entertaining."

"The comic engineering remains impressive — the mounting chaos around the fire drill is clever and funny. But, overall, it’s a chance to check in for some familiar dishes rather than sample anything fresh."