Fawltless... just don’t mention the TV classic
Fawlty Towers Apollo Theatre, London Until September 28, 1hr 50mins ★★★★☆ Withnail And I Birmingham Rep Until Saturday, 2hrs 20mins ★★★☆☆
This week theatregoers have been treated to not one but two much-loved classics refashioned for the stage, and the message in tackling such cult favourites is clearly: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Unalloyed joy for die-hard fans, then?
Certainly, in Fawlty Towers, adapted by its co-creator John Cleese himself, you have an almost identikit experience, in a piece that threads together three episodes – the ones with the hotel inspector, the deaf guest and, of course, ‘the Germans’. And, technically, it’s pretty seamless. Fawltless, you might say.
It’s slickly performed under director Caroline Jay Ranger – no mean feat in pulling off such complex physical shenanigans live on stage rather than in a TV studio, but those farcical elements mean that it is well suited to the stage.
Add to this some extremely impressive performances, notably from Adam Jackson-Smith as Fawlty. He’s not just some tall, skinny chap with a ’tache. He embodies the character both vocally, with an uncanny likeness to Cleese, and physically – all bendy rubberiness – and captures the splenetic outbursts, the waspish asides and inner pain. You can almost see the vein throbbing in his temple.
This all climaxes with inevitable chaos, a gun going off and the famous goose-stepping in front of sobbing Germans.
There is praise, too, for Anna-Jane Casey as the ‘dragon’ wife Sybil, with her braying laugh, intoning ‘Ooh I know’ into the phone nasally, and a multi-hued wedge of hair that could double effectively as a doorstop.
Hemi Yeroham is also adorable as Manuel. ‘I know nothing. I am from Barcelona’ gets one of the biggest laughs of the night. But you do wonder about the point of simply recreating a TV sitcom in the theatre. Why not just stream it instead?
Live theatre is always a more immediate experience, and true fans will enjoy the denizens of ‘Farty Towels’ once again.
You might say the same about Withnail And I. Bruce Robinson wrote and directed the cult 1987 film – concerning a pair of drunk, hapless actors in 1969 and their weird visit to the country – and similarly recreates it in stage form.
Sean Foley’s production is jolly, with a rock band on stage (also the central duo’s rusty sky-blue Jag), often backed by wobbly video scenery suggesting a hallucinatory trip in all senses. The film gave
Richard E. Grant his film debut (Daniel Day-Lewis turned the role down) and it is hard to get away from. Robert Sheehan in the required huge coat has the same lanky, uncontrolled body, though he’s more physical than louche as he drinks lighter fluid and vomits into a Chelsea boot.
Adonis Siddique’s put-upon Marwood (the ‘I’ of the title) is more nerdy and panicky than Paul McGann in the film.
There’s a relentlessly farcelike feel, but while it works on stage with Fawlty Towers, here it adds a much broader humour to a more subtle and melancholic tragi-comedy that’s about betrayal, eccentricity and the late 1960s.
The star of the evening is the always wonderful Malcolm Sinclair, a prissier turn as the predatory homosexual Uncle Monty than Richard Griffiths in the film. Though the scenes at his Penrith cottage, with all their innuendo, also have a sadness that is ultimately realised in Withnail’s railing, valedictory Hamlet soliliquy.