By Elissa Blake
For those who grew up watching Fawlty Towers on the ABC, and for subsequent generations who have caught it on VHS, DVD or piecemeal via YouTube or Netflix, it remains a peerless situation comedy.
Two series. Twelve episodes. A little under six hours of television in total. Fawlty Towers is one of those rare comedies that left us wanting more – a TV show that never jumped the shark.
Blazey Best and Stephen Hall prepare to take on the roles of Sybil and Basil Fawlty.
"It was always my after-school program of choice," says Blazey Best, who plays Sybil Fawlty in the premiere season of John Cleese's stage adaptation of the series he created with his then wife Connie Booth in 1975.
"My father used to keep a lot of stuff on VHS, so I used to watch Fawlty Towers on repeat," Best says. "Prunella Scales was very formative to me as an actress. I think I've absorbed the way she played status and I always loved her coolness. She and Miss Piggy have been my two greatest influences."
The original cast from the TV show: Manuel (Andrew Sachs), Basil Fawlty (John Cleese), Sybil Fawlty (Prunella Scales) and Polly (Connie Booth).
Stephen Hall, who plays the role of hotel proprietor Basil Fawlty, was a fan, too. "I watched it religiously," Hall says. "There are at least three moments I remember distinctly where I actually fell off the couch laughing. Like when the awful Mrs Richards, the deaf lady, bumps her head and Basil picks up something small up off the floor and asks her, 'Is this a piece of your brain?'. Inspired!"
So what was it like auditioning for Cleese himself?
Best likens the audition to playing a Beatles song for Paul McCartney. "But [Cleese] was so lovely and supportive," she says. "I didn't even feel nervous. I was just struck by the weirdness of my life."
For Hall, the experience was "bizarre".
The Fawlty Towers: Live on Stage cast recreate the original show's publicity shot.
"Your job for the day is to go into a room and try to make John Cleese laugh," Hall says. "But he said afterwards, 'Thank you for showing me how funny my script is'. A friend said to me afterwards, 'Well, there's your tattoo'."
Coming up with his own take on Basil Fawlty was the clincher, Hall says.
Cast from the sitcom's stage show, which has its world premiere in Sydney, out of costume.
"In the audition, I tried to come up with new bits of business and new ways of moving. John laughed, so that was an early good sign. When we went into the final audition, he said he didn't want impersonators in the show, he wanted a more complete character. But of course, you still have to walk in Basil's shoes. The audience doesn't want to see you try to reinvent the wheel."
Punters will get the full Basil experience, Hall says. "When we did our first photo session in character, I found myself bending into these pretzel-like shapes of clenched rage. You can't help it."
The manic farce of the successful TV show is being brought to the theatre.
Hall is taking his physical preparations seriously. Lots of stretching. A bit of yoga. "Basil is a physical challenge. Each show is a bit of a marathon. The silly walks, the slapstick and the falls. I've got to get my hamstrings loose because this show is going to put them through the wringer."
Famously, Cleese based Basil Fawlty on a real person, Donald Sinclair, a hotel proprietor he encountered while filming on location for Monty Python's Flying Circus in 1970. When the BBC's head of light entertainment asked Cleese to come up with ideas for a new sitcom, Sinclair sprang to mind.
Working with Connie Booth (who plays Polly in the TV series), Cleese's scripts were forensically detailed in regard to physical action. Every pratfall, trip down the stairs or sideways look was on paper prior to the show being recorded in front of a live audience. In many respects, a Fawlty Towers script already resembles a stage comedy.
Cleese's stage adaptation of Fawlty Towers blends three episodes (Communication Problems, The Germans and Basil and the Rat) into one manic farce. The Sydney production, which will be performed on a detailed recreation of the original hotel set at the Roslyn Packer Theatre, will be the show's world premiere.
The decision to premiere Fawlty Towers in Sydney was a pragmatic one, Cleese revealed to the Herald in March this year.
"The British press doesn't like me very much," Cleese said at the Fawlty Towers Live media launch. "I don't think I would have got very good reviews [in London]. America would cost too much and [Fawlty Towers] is not as big a show there as [Monty] Python. And in the West End, the British press always characterise the Pythons now as has-beens."
After its Sydney season, the show will tour to Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth, Brisbane and New Zealand. Then, perhaps, a West End production will beckon.
For Cleese, there's also an element of payback. Lookalike shows such as Faulty Towers The Dining Experience have been playing in Australia for years. Cleese doesn't get a cent from a show that riffs on scenes from the sitcom while charging up to $195 per head to sit at a table and be served by actors impersonating Manuel, Polly, Basil and Sybil.
"These people are completely brazen, utterly shameless," Cleese told Fairfax. "They take our concepts, they take our characters, they take our characters' names and then they change the W to a U and say it's got nothing to do with our show."
Cleese is pondering legal action. "Now that Fawlty Towers is about to happen as a proper stage show and producers are investing money in what is a risky enterprise, we certainly don't want other shows out there confusing people," he said.
The producer of Faulty Towers The Dining Experience, Interactive Theatre International, has said through a spokeswoman it was "staggered by Cleese's vitriol towards us and our tribute show".
Fawlty Towers is one of several TV sitcom spin-offs that have been translated to the stage. It's a fertile area for theatre producers. Australian audiences saw the West End stage version of Yes, Prime Minister in 2012. Thirty years after it was broadcast, Geoffrey Atherden turned his ABC classic Mother & Son into a stage show. Cheers Live on Stage debuts in Boston in September. Each night, 10 audience members will be invited onstage to play bar patrons. Gilligan's Island, The Brady Bunch, and Happy Days have all been turned into stage musicals.
"It's like spending an evening with old friends," Hall says. "But in every other respect, it's pure theatre. It's still new every night and every audience is a different organism. Plus you have the immediacy. It's actually happening in the room with you. There's nothing quite like it."
Hall and Best expect the show to appeal very broadly. "I know a lot of people are buying tickets for their parents," Hall says.
"Families don't sit around watching the TV like I used to when I was a kid," Best adds. "When you had two or three channels, you watched what you were given and you did it as a family. That doesn't happen any more. I think that's why this show will be a bit special."
Fawlty Towers Live plays August 19 to September 18 at Roslyn Packer Theatre, Walsh Bay; $67-$137.
FUNNIEST FAWLTY MOMENTS
#1 Fire!
"I remember crying with laughter during the fire drill, when an exasperated Basil shoved Manuel back into the burning kitchen. Basil is so blind to what's really going on. It's glorious."
Stephen Hall (on The Germans, season 1)
#2 Postal
"When Sybil comes back from golf to find the dining room door bricked up. She goes postal with the umbrella, beating up the dodgy builder, O'Reilly."
Blazey Best (The Builders, season 1)
#3 Basil unfiltered
"When Basil wakes up in hospital, and tells the nurse rearranging his bedding, 'My god, you're ugly'. This is Basil suffering from concussion, so maybe his shockingly inadequate social filter was even more sub-par than usual on that day." Stephen Hall (The Germans, season 1)
#4 Revenge!
"Fed up with his car breaking down just when he needs it not to, Basil threatens to give it 'a damn good thrashing'. In a lesser show, the furious rant at the car would've been where that gag ended. Not in Fawlty Towers. Instead, Basil goes off screen, goes to the trouble of getting a tree branch, re-enters frame and carries out his threat. Sublime."
Stephen Hall (Gourmet Night, season 1)
#5 While Basil's away …
"Basil is driving into town to get the duck for dinner and Sybil is holding court, telling stories. She's delightful, three sheets to the wind and laughing. It's lovely to see her so loose."
Blazey Best (Gourmet Night, season 1)
JOHN CLEESE IN CONVERSATION
Fans of Fawlty Towers and of British comedy more broadly can get a double dose this month. For one night only, John Cleese will be on stage, in conversation with ABC Radio's James Valentine (August 15, Sydney Opera House, $49).
Cleese is no stranger to Sydney. He's performed here several times, ostensibly to maintain payments to his ex-wife Alyce Eichelberger (2013's The Alimony Tour). More recently, Cleese, 76, took to the State Theatre stage with Eric Idle in an amiable two-handed trawl through the history of Monty Python in Together Again at Last … for the Very First Time.
With Valentine as inquisitor, expect this evening to range more widely, with Cleese talking about his personal life, his comic influences and his development as one of the most influential writer-performers of his generation.
This week Cleese launched his own YouTube channel, introducing it in typically madcap fashion wearing a cutout mask of his own face and declaring, "I'm still alive!".