JOHN CLEESE SAYS FARCE BEST IN THEATER AS HE BRINGS ‘FAWLTY TOWERS’ TO STAGE
LONDON—John Cleese says farce is best seen in the theater as he brings a new stage version of his classic 1970s comedy show “Fawlty Towers” to London’s West End.
“Fawlty Towers The Play” has been adapted by Cleese, who cowrote and starred in the original TV series, playing Basil Fawlty, the inhospitable owner of a chaotic fictional hotel in the southern English seaside resort town of Torquay.
The 84-year-old has adapted three of his favorite episodes for the play, which opened at London’s Apollo Theatre on Saturday.
“Farce is best in a theater because in a theater, you can watch everything that’s going on. On TV ... there’s somebody choosing this or that close up, “ Cleese told Reuters in an interview on Thursday. “So it plays better in a theater than it does anywhere else.”
Ranges of ages
“Fawlty Towers,” written by Cleese and Connie Booth, ran for 12 episodes in 1975 and 1979.
Actor Adam Jackson-Smith will play Basil in the new play, while Anna-Jane Casey will take on the role of his bossy wife, Sybil.
“People assume that because it’s of a time and it was only broadcast in the late ‘70s and ‘80s that that’s the only audience who will enjoy it, which is absolute rubbish,” Casey said. “I know 18-year-olds, 9-year-olds who’ve gone, ‘That’s that funny program about the hotel’ because they’ve seen it (on TV) ... So, we know it will spread across so many ranges of ages.”
As well as the play, Cleese is working on a “Fawlty Towers” TV reboot with his daughter Camilla.
“We just decided there was no point in trying to do ‘Fawlty Towers’ [again] because we’d done that as well as we could,” Cleese said. “But when somebody suggested a way of doing it, which had never occurred to me, we said afterwards, ‘That could be very interesting.’ The only character from the old Torquay version would be Basil and... my daughter would be Basil’s [illegitimate] daughter.”