Review: Fawlty Towers at the Liverpool Empire ****

Fawlty Towers is often voted among the best ever British television sitcoms. But it wasn’t, as it happens, an overnight sensation.

The show aired first on BBC2 in September 1975 and garnered just under two million viewers. That’s a good figure by today’s standards, but in an era with only three TV channels it was decidedly modest (Stanley Baxter on ITV at the same time apparently pulled in 12 million).

Reruns, and a move to BBC1, changed all that, and half-a-century, but still only 12 original episodes later, John Cleese and Connie Booth’s show is a beloved national institution.

Perhaps it’s only a surprise that it hasn’t been staged until now (not counting the unofficial Fawlty Towers the Dining Experience of course). Cleese’s adaption of some of the show’s episodes into a single play was a big draw in the West End and is now on a UK tour, checking in to the Liverpool Empire where the audience on opening night gave it a much warmer reception than the irascible Basil ever managed to his own guests.

Fawlty Towers is essentially a catalogue of mishaps, and in a classic case of life imitating art, the first night at the Empire wasn’t without its own troubles.

Barely six or seven minutes into the first half, Basil (Danny Bayne) and Sybil (Mia Austen) where having the first marital skirmish of the night when a black-clad member of the crew emerged stage left and walked purposefully across the set to speak to them.

Was it, I thought momentarily, a part of the show? A sort of meta-theatre nod to the play’s TV studio origins?

It wasn’t. The actors went off, the house lights went up, and after a hiatus of 10-15 minutes the word finally came that there was a spot of cast musical chairs with Paul Nicholas seemingly indisposed backstage and his understudy Neil Stewart donning the Major’s dapper blazer instead.

Stewart, unexpectedly thrust into the spotlight, did an excellent job as the genial but bewildered old buffer, but all the same one hopes it’s nothing serious with Nicholas and he manages to return to the role at some point during the play's Liverpool sojourn.

Above: Mia Austen as Sybil. Top: Don't mention the war! Danny Bayne as Basil Fawlty. Photos by Hugo Glendinning.

As mentioned, Fawlty Towers the Play ostensibly winds together a trio of hazard-strewn episodes from Fawlty Towers the TV sitcom – The Hotel Inspectors, Communication Problems and The Germans – but also nods in the direction of one or two other key moments from across the wider two series which fans will enjoy.

Director Caroline Jay Ranger keeps a firm hand on the tiller while allowing her cast the latitude to ratchet up the ridiculousness one exasperated sigh, roll of eye and passive-aggressive aside at a time.

Ranger is also the director of that other TV ‘national treasure’ Only Fools and Horses, which visited the Empire earlier this year. And similarly to Only Fools, there’s a palpable change in the air when the Fawlty Towers audience (demographically largely of the saw-it-the-first-time round – and I include myself in that) anticipates a classic line is incoming.

He’s from Barcelona you know. Herds of wildebeest sweeping majestically across the plain. Don’t mention the war! It’s essentially a catalogue of greatest hits and all the more satisfying for it.

Above: Basil and Manuel (Hemi Yeroham). Photo by Hugo Glendinning.

At the heart of the show, Bayne nails it as Basil, his misanthropic hotelier vacillating between cringeworthy obsequiousness (Uriah Heap would be jealous), caustic dismissiveness and spiralling meltdowns - his comic timing and physical flailing is spot on, and Mia Austen knows all the right buttons to push as the intimidating Sybil (a lovely tribute to the late, lovely Pru Scales).

Meanwhile Hemi Yeroham is endlessly delightful as the eager-to-please Manuel, an innocent abroad. Literally.

The action reaches a calamitous climax with a concussed Basil and the arrival of a trio of German guests. What could possibly go wrong? I think we all know the answer to that.

It’s played out on Liz Ascroft’s faithfully realised set, with reception stage right and the dining room stage left, and a single bedroom (from where Jemma Churchill's deaf battleship Mrs Richards fails to spot the sea…or the Hanging Gardens of Babylon) above.

Also above is the famous hotel sign. Keen-eyed audience members will notice that it doesn’t say ‘Fawlty Towers’ by the end, but perhaps a trick is missed in not having someone up there rearranging the letters a couple of times more.

Still, there’s plenty else for Fawlty fans to savour in a nostalgic evening of slapstick, farce and much missed general silliness.