Fawlty Towers At Royal & Derngate, Northampton Review
DISCLOSURE – TICKETS TO SEE THE SHOW WERE GIFTED TO THE REVIEWER AND GUEST FOR THE PURPOSES OF WRITING THE REVIEW
Reviewed by Janine Rumble
Absolutely laugh out loud hilarious!!! For any fan of the hit TV show, Fawlty Towers with John Cleese and Prunella Scales, I highly recommend you come and see this show. It will have you laughing out loud with its utter silliness until your sides and your cheeks ache. What a wonderful, silly, nostalgic step back in time! If you were not an avid fan of the show back in the day, then this is still a treat for you. For a couple of hours, you can sit back and laugh and laugh and laugh.
The show, adapted for the stage by John Cleese himself and directed by Caroline Jay Ranger is a riotous look into the goings on at Fawlty Towers, a highly dysfunctional hotel set in Torquay, Devon with its hilariously dysfunctional owner, Basil Fawlty, played superbly by the brilliant Danny Bayne and his long suffering wife Sybil, played by Mia Austen. Their staff, Polly, played by Joanne Clifton, of Strictly Come Dancing fame and the long suffering waiter/general dogsbody Manuel, played by Hemi Yeroham and the quests who pay to stay in the hotel.
The show blends everyone’s favourite parts of the 12 episode TV show into two and a half minutes of hilarity. All the famous bits are included and, even though, you will have seen them before, the moments in the show are just so silly that they will have you rocking in your seats laughing as if it is the first time you have seen them.
The plot covers a day in the life of the dysfunctional hotel and its myriad of guests, little old ladies enjoying the sea air, a deaf old lady who refuses to turn her hearing aid on, an infuriating and demanding guest who sells spoons, the bumbling Major, played by Paul Nicholas of Just Good Friends fame and some Germans, who all, in their own ways, bring Basil to the point of a breakdown. Add to this the threat of hotel inspectors in the area, a fire drill, a burglar alarm, a rat, an illicit gamble, lost/stolen money, a gun, a moose head and cries of “Don’t Mention The War!” then you are in for a riot of a time.
By the end of the show my sides ached at how silly and how quickly everything descended into manic chaos with all 17 cast on the stage.
My favourite part was the moose head, the Major and Basil, just so silly, but so hilariously funny.
Danny Bayne plays Basil so, so well. Before the show, I did wonder if the character would be a caricature of John Cleese’s Basil, but no, Danny made the character his own and I did not think of John Cleese until the very end and the silly walk! He was just brilliant and his interactions with the other characters changed in a second depending on who he was interacting with, just hilarious and exhausting to watch at the same time. And his interactions with Manuel, were so funny and so silly…poor Manuel!
The set was brilliant and looked just like the hotel in the show, with the welcome desk to one side, the stairs going up to a room and the dining room and kitchen to the right. It looked just like hotels we might have stayed in back in the day and really added to the ambience and the believability of the show.
I highly recommend everyone sees this show. It is just so funny and so silly. 5/5 stars from me!!!
Running Time: 2 hours and 20 minutes.
Tickets can be purchased from the Royal and Derngate box office or online https://royalandderngate.co.uk/whats-on/fawlty-towers/