JAN MOIR: Is Basil goose stepping in front of Germans still funny? Of course it bloody is!

Release time：2024-05-19 15:07:50 Source：International Insights news portal

Just behind me in row K, a man is watching a football match on his mobile phone. 'Shocking free kick,' he murmurs to his luckless date.

If Basil Fawlty were here, and in so many ways he absolutely is, he would surely have something to say about this.

He might want to give the bloke a damn good thrashing with the branch of a tree. He might dismiss him as the kind of uncultured riff-raff who believes a Waldorf salad to be the height of civilisation.

He might just want to destroy the dolt with the power of his curdled invective. 'Have you seen the people in the Apollo Theatre? They've never even sat on chairs before,' he might screech.

Yet that would be neither fair nor true. Five minutes before Fawlty Towers: The Play begins, my neighbour must be the only punter in this West End theatre who is not totally Fawlty-focused; who is not completely bedazzled by the prospect of a fresh chiffonade of Basil being sprinkled upon the bland pizza of popular culture. Outside on Shaftesbury Avenue earlier, the queue for returns was three deep.

Five minutes before Fawlty Towers: The Play begins, my neighbour must be the only punter in this West End theatre who is not totally Fawlty-focused; who is not completely bedazzled by the prospect of a fresh chiffonade of Basil being sprinkled upon the bland pizza of popular culture (pictured: Fawlty Towers - The Play)

For Fawlty-deprived fans, this is a theatrical moment to drink deep and savour. John Cleese himself has adapted the iconic 1970s television series he co-wrote with his then-wife Connie Booth (together right) into this production

The House Full signs were up by 7pm and, since then, the theatre bar has been doing a roaring trade in Fawlty Towers-themed cocktails, named after the famous sitcom's beloved characters.

Bizarrely, The Major is alcohol-free, The Basil is Bacardi-based (please, Basil would never drink anything so déclassé as white rum) and the bestseller is The Sybil, a mixture of gin, rhubarb lemonade and lemon, which sounds about right.

For Fawlty-deprived fans, this is a theatrical moment to drink deep and savour. John Cleese himself has adapted the iconic 1970s television series he co-wrote with his then-wife Connie Booth into this production, melding three of his favourite episodes - The Hotel Inspectors, The Germans and Communication Problems - into one 90-minute play.

Famous scenes now nearly 50 years old have been blitzed into this big, lucrative Fawlty smoothie, topped off with a slight, frothy new ending - no doubt to be gulped down by the cult of uncritical fans who just want to laugh at Manuel all over again.

READ MORE: John Cleese admits he agreed to Fawlty Towers West End revival for the pay cheque: 'I want enough money so I don't fly commercial' 

A part of me does wonder, what is the point? But the point seems to be to relish another opportunity to revel in the magnificence of a certain kind of Englishman, a hero shrouded in his tweeds and Faragist prejudices and terrible fear of his wife, Sybil.

And also to marvel at a global cultural phenomenon that sprung from the modest parameters of a 22-bedroom seaside hotel and a run of only two television series and 12 episodes. 

It took Cleese and Booth six weeks to write each episode and, after they had finished, they were never inclined to go back. Why meddle with perfection, they thought. And perhaps they were right.

Yet here we are, inside a London theatre, looking at a lovingly familiar scene. Stage left, the light is pooling through a bay window as the sun rises on another Torquay morning. 

Stage right, there is the reception desk with its cubbyholes and telephones, its coat stand and key hooks. From the barometer on the hall wall to the dado rail and the flock wallpaper, from the double swing doors that lead from the dining room to the kitchen, we know exactly where we are and what to expect.

Such is the power of the show's popularity that from the moment the new Basil Fawlty (Adam Jackson-Smith) walks on stage, the audience start laughing. They laugh before he has even said a word. 

They laugh when they see Manuel (Hemi Yeroham, in an unconvincing wig) bumbling into his latest calamity. They laugh at the chainsaw laugh of Sybil (Anna-Jane Casey).

They laugh when Polly (Victoria Fox) tries to guess the name of Basil's winning horse. They laugh when The Major (Paul Nicholas) gets his gun to kill a rat.

British actor John Cleese poses with cast member Adam Jackson-Smith during a photocall promoting the theatrical remake of his 1975 television program 'Fawlty Towers' at the Apollo Theatre in London, Britain, May 2, 2024

John Cleese, Adam Jackson-Smith, Anna-Jane Casey and Hemi Yeroham 'Fawlty Towers - The Play' photocall, Apollo Theatre, London, on May 2, 2024

The hope is that Fawlty Towers, after bringing laughter and pleasure to generations, will reinvigorate new audiences via the collective experience of seeing it in the theatre

There is an absolute eruption of hilarity every time Manuel utters his famous catchphrase: 'I know nothing.' And the audience even laugh when the infamous moose head first makes its appearance on stage.

In this new Fawlty Towers terrain, nothing but absolutely nothing has changed. The moose still even has a 'touch of mange about it,' but the audience don't seem to mind.

Perhaps that is because Fawlty Towers represents something so much more in the national consciousness than a mere comedy television series. 

It is also an entire cultural world; a testament to human failure, the kind of British affair that plumbs the depths of embarrassment and salutes our globally unsurpassable love of wince and the deluded loser.

READ MORE: The real-life couple who inspired Fawlty Towers: How guesthouse owners Donald Sinclair and his wife were behind the creation of Basil and Sybil Fawlty... and the other hotel staff who inspired waiter Manuel and long-suffering maid Polly 

From Dad's Army (Captain Mainwaring) to Rising Damp (Mr Rigsby) to Only Fools And Horses (Del Boy) to The Office (David Brent), there is no character we love more than the small man trying to act big. Fawlty Towers was also blessed by a cast rich with superb slapstick and physical comedy talents, not least Cleese himself.

'Basil is universal,' he wrote in a recent essay. 'His Englishness is to do with trying to remain calm and not managing to do so... What makes him such a deeply loved character is that people have sympathy for him, they can see that he is trapped.'

Despite the threat of cancel culture and what Cleese calls 'too much change' in the world of television, fans will be delighted to hear that Basil still calls people cretins, he still goose-steps in front of his German guests and still relishes the fact that Sybil has an ingrowing toenail 'machete-ing its way through the nerve'.

He even still shouts at a deaf old lady having trouble with her hearing aid, which was the only part of the evening I found cruel - although back in the day I thought it was hilarious, which probably says more about me than it does about Basil.

The hope is that Fawlty Towers, after bringing laughter and pleasure to generations, will reinvigorate new audiences via the collective experience of seeing it in the theatre. 

If there is a downside, it is that the play only emphasises how utterly brilliant the original performances were, from the lead roles to incomparable smaller turns by the likes of Bernard Cribbins, Joan Sanderson and Robin Ellis.

Yet gag by gag, quip by quip, we find ourselves back in 1970s Torquay, still deep in thwart, sarcasm, class wars, silly foreigners, snobbery and the war with Germany. 

When Cleese and Booth first wrote their peerless scripts back in 1975, the war had ended only 30 years previously - now, of course, we are nearly 50 years further on.

Times have changed. We have evolved. Do British audiences still find the Germans funny? Well, of course we bloody do. Just please don't mention the war.

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