FAWLTY TOWERS THE PLAY

Apollo Theatre

★★★★

“the stage becomes a compressed farce machine – a pressure cooker of mounting chaos”

Reviving a show as beloved as Fawlty Towers for the stage is a feat fraught with danger. With just 12 original episodes broadcast in the 1970s, the sitcom has long enjoyed legendary status. So, how do you take something that is perfect in its own right, wrap it in theatrical garb, and not break it in the process?

The answer, it seems, is by doubling down on what people already adore. Director Caroline Jay Ranger’s slick, affectionate production at the Apollo Theatre does little to reimagine the world of Torquay’s most dysfunctional hotel, but it does an impeccable job of reanimating it.

This is not so much a reinvention as a meticulous act of resurrection. The script, overseen by John Cleese himself, splices together three of the series’ most memorable episodes – The Germans, The Hotel Inspectors, and Communication Problems – into a 90-minute parade of familiar gags, lovingly preserved and expertly timed.

This is a jukebox comedy, playing the greatest hits for the faithful:

Don’t mention the war. Check.

I know nothing. Check.

May I ask what you expected to see out of a Torquay hotel bedroom window? Check.

There’s enormous pleasure in watching Danny Bayne goose-step and rage his way into Basil Fawlty’s frustrated shoes. His performance is an astonishing feat of mimicry, down to the clipped vowels and furious flailing limbs, provoking cheers not just for the comedy but for the uncanny likeness to Cleese himself.

The supporting cast are similarly faithful to their television forebears. Mia Austen is spookily accurate as Sybil, her grating laugh and imperious glare brilliantly intact. Joanne Clifton channels Connie Booth’s Polly with quiet efficiency, while Hemi Yeroham turns in a wink-to-the-crowd Manuel. Paul Nicholas, meanwhile, gently steals his scenes as the absent-minded Major with a twinkle in the eye.

Designer Liz Ascroft deserves special praise for conjuring the hotel’s multiple settings within a single, beautifully retro set, even allowing for an exterior view of that classic black and white hotel façade (and sign). With cleverly arranged spaces for reception, dining room and guest quarters, the stage becomes a compressed farce machine – a pressure cooker of mounting chaos.

And indeed, the play’s structure, while episodic, leans into the genre’s strengths. The escalating misunderstandings, linguistic blunders and slapstick near-disasters all translate well to live performance. Few comedies have ever lent themselves so easily to farce.

While the adaptation’s loyalty is its triumph, it is also its limit. By mining the original show for greatest hits, the production struggles to establish its own momentum. Lines have been trimmed or lightly updated, but the framework remains largely untouched. The jokes are still funny – often hilariously so – but they’re jokes we already know. The audience laughs with a sense of shared affection.

People – giddy with glee – were applauding in recognition of an iconic line, character, or episode long before they duly arrived.

There’s no denying the sheer craft and zest on display. Ranger and her cast have pulled off a tricky balancing act, creating a stage experience that honours its source without sinking into lazy pastiche. It doesn’t reimagine Fawlty Towers for a new generation, because it doesn’t have to (and maybe the xenophobic tendencies make the material too problematic to try).

It simply invites us back, to laugh, remember, and marvel at the little slice of perfection John Cleese and Connie Booth carved into the very English comic canon.

FAWLTY TOWERS THE PLAY

Apollo Theatre followed by UK Tour from September

Reviewed on 3rd July 2025

by Giles Broadbent

Photography by Hugo Glendinning

Previously reviewed at this venue:

RETROGRADE | ★★★★ | March 2025

FAWLTY TOWERS THE PLAY | ★★★★★ | May 2024

MIND MANGLER | ★★★★ | March 2024

THE TIME TRAVELLER’S WIFE | ★★★ | November 2023

POTTED PANTO | ★★★★★ | December 2022

CRUISE | ★★★★★ | August 2022

MONDAY NIGHT AT THE APOLLO | ★★★½ | May 2021

FAWLTY

★★★★

“Tragedy and farce link arms and are not afraid to share the same lines of dialogue.”

Although Alan Bleasdale wrote the original series of television plays before Margaret Thatcher came to power, it wasn’t first broadcast until 1982 and was consequently seen to be a specific critique of the Thatcher era. His writing, though, had a far more wide-ranging effect that guaranteed the success of the stories. The nostalgic and gritty realism still holds power nearly half a century later, as evidenced by James Graham’s stirring adaptation for the stage, currently on a nationwide tour.

The early nineteen-eighties were different things for different people. At one end of the scale there were the rich and ambitious, riding on progress and the jetstream of new money. But while Harry Enfield parodied this selfishness of the yuppie culture (we all remember the ‘Loadsamoney’ character?), Bleasdale was focusing on the underside; the high unemployment and collapse of the primary industries. “Boys form the Blackstuff” follows five working class men trying to keep afloat amid this recession, not helped by the suspicious and bullying hand of the Department of Employment.

Amy Jane Cook’s brutalist and severe set evokes the Liverpool docklands with its iron frameworks which close in on the more intimate scenes, lending an air of claustrophobia to the domestic bickering that runs parallel to the collective fight for survival that these characters are up against. Kate Wasserberg’s stylish direction weaves the short scenes together into a series of choreographed vignettes that flow, then clash like freshwater rapids coming up against the murkiness and remorselessness of the Mersey.

We get to know the principal characters early on (if we don’t know them already). Chrissie, Loggo, Yosser, George, Dixie and Snowy. Even if you are unfamiliar with the original, and once you’ve acclimatised to the authentic Liverpudlian accent, their stories are easy to follow. The performances of each cast member are strikingly individual and recognisable. Obviously, Jay Johnson’s ‘Yosser’ stands out from the crowd with his peppered catchphrases (‘gizza job’ and ‘I could do that’) and jittery, unpredictable energy. We realise that this could be a play about mental health – a sudden understanding that whisks the narrative into the present day but without the unease of having to tread carefully through contemporary fragility. Words of wisdom, particularly from Ged McKenna’s wonderfully uneducated yet perfectly erudite ‘George’, are never lost in the humour. We laugh through this show just as much as we gasp at the personal hardships endured.

The pace picks up in the second act, even as the scenes get longer and more introspective. The humour and pathos join forces in monologue. Tragedy and farce link arms and are not afraid to share the same lines of dialogue. A funeral scene, as poignant as they come, bleeds brilliantly into the comedy of a dole queue. An anguished wife (a superb Sian Polhill-Thomas) wondering how to feed her children is, in the next scene, an acerbically grim clerk at the jobcentre. But under the lights, each character casts shadow of hope. Even if the shades aren’t subtle, it is the contrast of light and dark that bring this show alive.

We might not have admitted this in the eighties, but these ‘boys’ feel emasculated, fragile and desperate for hope. The writing is sensitive beyond its years, and in Graham’s revival we can carouse in the period without having to make excuses for it. Despite being geographically and culturally specific, it is universal. And despite being rooted in a particular decade, it is timeless. The stories of ordinary people, told in an extraordinary production.

FAWLTY TOWERS THE PLAY

Apollo Theatre

★★★★

“the stage becomes a compressed farce machine – a pressure cooker of mounting chaos”

FAWLTY TOWERS THE PLAY

Apollo Theatre followed by UK Tour from September

Reviewed on 3rd July 2025

by Giles Broadbent

Photography by Hugo Glendinning

Previously reviewed at this venue:

FAWLTY

FAWLTY

FAWLTY

BOYS FROM THE BLACKSTUFF

Theatre Royal Windsor

★★★★

“Tragedy and farce link arms and are not afraid to share the same lines of dialogue.”

BOYS FROM THE BLACKSTUFF

Theatre Royal Windsor then UK Tour continues

Reviewed on 29th January 2025

by Jonathan Evans

Photography by Alistair Muir

Previously reviewed at this venue:

BOYS FROM THE BLACKSTUFF

BOYS FROM THE BLACKSTUFF

BOYS FROM THE BLACKSTUFF

JOIN US