Does the West End really need a stage adaptation of “Fawlty Towers”, the “greatest British sitcom ever made”? I entered the theatre feeling pretty sceptical, said Fiona Mountford in The i Paper. But I “emerged two hours later, giddily and delightfully weak from laughing and reminded for the umpteenth time of the sheer folly of making pre-emptive judgements about shows”.
John Cleese himself scripted this adaptation, which weaves together three favourite episodes of the comedy he co-wrote with Connie Booth: The Hotel Inspectors, The Germans and Communication Problems. Thanks to slick writing, hilarious performances and “super-smooth” direction from Caroline Jay Ranger, it recreates the original TV show’s “magic” and leaves the audience “wanting more, much more”.
With its “slapstick and mounting chaos”, “Fawlty Towers” had its roots in theatrical farce, said Brian Logan in The Guardian, and it feels fully at home on stage. Admittedly, it doesn’t quite add up to a coherent stand-alone play, but such are the joys of the performances, that scarcely matters. Adam Jackson-Smith’s Basil is as “astonishing an act of mimicry-cum-resurrection” as you’ll ever see.
He’s “almost entirely Cleese-like in his voice, long-levered body language, elastic pratfalls and sense of urgency”, said Dominic Maxwell in The Sunday Times. Yet this Basil never feels like mere “second-hand goods”. As the mega-coiffed Sybil, Anna-Jane Casey “gives glances that can wither a grown man through brick walls”. And Victoria Fox and Hemi Yeroham are terrific as Polly and Manuel respectively.
I laughed plenty, said Nick Curtis in the Evening Standard, yet found the experience “oddly soulless”. It is so loyal to the source material, it felt to me almost “an exercise in zombie nostalgia”. But that is surely the whole point, said Clive Davis in The Times. As a fan who has seen every episode of “Fawlty Towers” a dozen times, I enjoyed this cleverly adapted show as a “hugely entertaining blast of unadorned nostalgia”. In the programme notes, Cleese hints that a sequel to it could be on the cards. If so, “I’d like a Waldorf salad, please.”
Apollo Theatre, London W1 (0330-333 4809). Until 28 September