John Cleese: Fawlty Towers play a success as it is ‘funnier than anything else’
By Casey Cooper-Fiske, PA Entertainment Reporter
John Cleese has said his stage adaptation of Fawlty Towers has been successful because 50 years on from the show’s 1975 TV debut it is still “funnier than anything else that’s on these days”.
The 85-year-old was speaking to the PA news agency ahead of a new run of Fawlty Towers: The Play, which will begin at the Apollo Theatre in London’s Shaftesbury Avenue on June 24, where it will remain until September 13 before heading out on a UK and Ireland tour.
The show’s West End run will see Absolutely Fabulous actress Helen Lederer join the cast to play Mrs Richards, while former Strictly Come Dancing professional dancer Joanne Clifton will join both the West End and touring cast to play Polly, and Paul Nicholas will reprise his role as the Major.
Speaking about the success of the show, which began in Australia in 2016 before moving to the West End in May last year, Cleese told PA: “Well, this may sound a bit smug, but I knew the script pretty well, and we’d done it in Australia a few years before Covid.
“So I knew the script was very, very funny, but the moment which I was so thrilled about was when I was attending by Zoom the auditions, and I could not believe how good the people auditioning were.
“We had three people who could have done Basil, we had two who could do Sybil, we had about three who could do Manuel, probably four who could do Polly – we could have taken any of them and they would have been good, we had the best of the best of the best.
“And once I’d seen them in rehearsal for a day or two, I thought there’s no way that people aren’t going to like this, I didn’t know whether we’d be 100% full or 80%, but there’s no way we’re going to be 30%, because this is funnier than anything else that’s on these days.
“I’ve seen one or two of the other things that are on and they’re just not very funny.”
But despite enjoying the success of his stage show, Cleese said he is becoming frustrated with modern audiences wanting “the old stuff”.
The comedian, who is also known for his performances in films including Monty Python And The Holy Grail (1975), Monty Python’s Life Of Brian (1979) and A Fish Called Wanda (1988), continued: “When we were doing the Monty Python show at the O2, which is just over 10 years ago, what we had o do is to find a balance between the new material and the old material.
“And people wanted to see the old classics and we wanted to do new stuff.
“I went to see a famous singer once at the Royal Albert Hall. He got booed in the second half because he was singing new songs, so this becomes quite a problem.
“People are more scared now, more anxious, and so all people always revert to stereotype.
“I have the script of an extraordinarily funny film that I’ve written with my daughter about Hollywood lookalikes, and it’s really good.
“And I’ve got another very detailed treatment, what I call a light comedy, about cannibalism, and I’ve also got a script which is an adaptation of a farce by Georges Feydeau, who is the greatest of all the farceurs.
“So I have three or four things that I would love to do, but people want something where the audience already knows the name.”
The Fawlty Towers play has seen Cleese select three of his favourite episodes from the BBC Two TV series – The Hotel Inspector and The Germans from series one and Communication Problems from series two – which have then been adapted into a two-hour play.
Its cast also features Danny Bayne playing Basil Fawlty, Mia Austen as Sybil and Hemi Yeroham as Spanish waiter Manuel.
Set in a fictional hotel in the seaside town of Torquay, only 12 episodes of the original series were ever made.
Based on a real-life hotel owner, Donald Sinclair, Cleese came up with the idea for the character Basil Fawlty when he stayed at Sinclair’s Gleneagles Hotel and said he became fascinated with his rude behaviour.