Theatre
Interview
Fawlty Towers: “We all see ourselves in these characters”
Chatting to the cast about the legacy of the show as Fawlty Towers: The Play returns to the West End
If you had to guess how many episodes of Fawlty Towers aired in total, what would you say? The cast of Fawlty Towers: The Play all acknowledge a sort of Mandela effect – the TV show was not just an immense hit in its day, but remains an orbital force in British comedy, helping to define what British humour is – and it did it in just 12 episodes.
“I can’t believe it didn’t do more than two series,” says Joanne Clifton, who plays Polly. When I got the job, I started going back, doing my research. I was like, wait, surely there were more episodes than that!”
“The Office did it as well,” says Mia Austen, who plays Sybil. “They learned that if you go out on a high then it means your writing is strong.”
A returning member of the cast from the show’s last London run, Austen previously covered the part of Sybil, and is now stepping into the role full-time – likewise for Danny Bayne with the part of Basil Fawlty.
“John Cleese said when he was doing his interviews about the show that back then that the BBC would commission you to write, and most people would write an episode in a week,” says Bayne. “For them, it was six weeks. It was six weeks to write one episode, which was so much longer than what was expected of them. But look what came out of it. The fact that him and Connie Booth put so much passion and effort into one episode, that’s why I think it’s so brilliant. It’s like a really fast table tennis match, and we just sort of hold on and hope it works.”
With the show returning to London for a run at the Apollo Theatre, we sat down with the cast to unpack why Fawlty Towers still has such a hold on British comedy.
When did you first watch the original show?
Danny Bayne: I have many memories of watching it when I was really young. My father was a huge comedy fan, so it was usually something inappropriate, like Porky’s was on the telly, and then there was The Pink Panther, which my father was a big fan of, and he loved Monty Python. Only Fools And Horses – which was my last job – and Fawlty Towers were on telly a lot. That was probably my introduction when I was six or seven years old.
Mia Austen: Fawlty Towers came to me a little bit later, but I’ve completely fallen in love since, I think because it’s still so relevant. The writing is brilliant – we all see ourselves in these characters. But even now, I might watch an episode to get some notes on a character and I’ll sort of forget what I’m doing. I’ll end up watching the whole episode, and maybe not looks at Sybil and just be watching everyone, because it’s just funny.
Paul Nicholas: I didn’t see that many episodes at the time but I was aware of it, because in the 70s I was doing quite a lot of theatre work, so I think the show was on when I was in the theatre. But of course, I’ve caught episodes over the years.
Joanne Clifton: John Cleese is my dad’s idol, so we always had it on in our house. My whole family are dancers as well, and my dad would copy the physicality of John Cleese and everything that he did.
Helen Lederer: I do remember seeing it when I was at school, and we just knew that it was kind of sacred comedy ground. People would quote all the lines.
Have you felt pressure at all to do an impression of the characters that people remember?
Mia Austen: I think it’d be foolish not to think people are coming to see their favourite characters, so I think we have to kind of honour that, but not necessarily an impression. It’s hopefully them with a little bit of a sprinkle of us in there.
Danny Bayne: I think John’s physicality as Basil is not possible to recreate perfectly because he’s six foot four. He was gangly. I’m a six foot, I’m a tall person, but compared to John I’m relatively small. The physicality is your own. But there are Basil-isms. There’s a lot of Basil-isms that have to be in it. How he stands, his eyebrow thing… you have to bed them into his reality so that when you’re doing it, you’re just like, okay, that is how he stands, how he walks, how he talks. It’s a version from a truthful place. Because it’s so well written, that’s quite easy to do.
Hemi Yeroham: I was actually very pleasantly surprised by how they handled that. I was quite curious about how they were going to approach that, because you have to deliver something that is recognisable, but you also don’t want people to do impressions. So I was curious but we had literally no notes. They kind of left us to play, and trusted us with finding the right level.
Helen Lederer: I didn’t study the show, although I’ve seen it. I think I just channelled this old bag. It’s quite liberating to be that much of an old bag all the time. I don’t let up.
Joanne Clifton: We’ve got to be as close as possible. But obviously we’re not them, so we’re never going to be exactly the same.
Helen Lederer: But I have to say, Jo has the most amazing Polly voice. It really does sound like the one you hear on TV, but on it’s own terms.
Joanne Clifton: Apart from when my northern comes out!
Why do you think this style of comedy still has such a hold on us?
Paul Nicholas: Well, it’s very British, isn’t it?
Hemi Yeroham: It’s quite timeless. It doesn’t relate to what’s happening at the time. It’s about the human condition. I’m sure if there was a way of seeing this 300 years ago, it would still be funny, because it’s about people. It’s about containing anger, it’s about marriage. It’s about who is oppressing who, peace and love.
Paul Nicholas: It’s all those things. I think the reason why the play has been so successful is because it’s retained something special to a lot of people out there who watch the original show. We deliver a part of the process that they want to see. They get what they came for, and that’s very important, I think.
Hemi Yeroham: It still applies now, because it’s about a husband and wife. It’s about how we see other people. It’s about the necessity to be polite whilst having to contain anger. These are all valid things, still very British things. How we see the foreigners… I mean, there’s talk about Brexit. Basil talks about how they got into the European Union and the attitudes towards that. And 50 years later, we’ve left the European Union and we’re still talking about it.
Danny Bayne: The relatability of all of the characters in the show is the thing I think that registers with people when they watch it, that there’s someone you know in your life that’s similar to someone in the show.
Mia Austen: There’s a bit of Sybil in every woman. And there’s a lot of Basil in every man.
Danny Bayne: Oh, definitely. I think there’s more Basil in most men than they would maybe realise!
Helen Lederer: It’s being able to laugh at desperate people. He’s so desperate, and we’re laughing with him and at him, but it’s very English in the sense that nothing is going well. It’s aspirant, isn’t it? It’s trying to be something it just will never be. And that’s what’s funny.
What makes the humour so characteristically English?
Paul Nicholas: There’s a reservedness about English humor, isn’t there? We’re slightly uptight.
Hemi Yeroham: John talks about how expressed anger isn’t funny, but unexpressed anger is. It creates very funny situations. I believe something like Fawlty Towers has carved the way for that kind of neurotic, Woody Allen comedy, or Curb Your Enthusiasm. They’re all very frustrated people who can’t quite express how they feel.
Paul Nicholas: He tried it out in America, didn’t he, with an American cast in a kind of American situation? And that didn’t really work, right? It’s peculiarly English, I think, in many ways.
Do you think the show is accessible for people who don’t know anything about Fawlty Towers?
Joanne Clifton: Absolutely. I mean, it’s so easy to understand, and, as we said, relatable. Everybody in the audience would have gone through some kind of experience in a hotel or somewhere similar.
Danny Bayne: One of my best pals came over from Brooklyn. He’s a movie star now. His name is Anthony Ramos [original star of Hamilton], and he came over and watched the show, and he’s as American as you can get. Never seen Fawlty Towers, grew up in the Projects, and he got to the end, and he was like, “Man, that was exhausting. I didn’t understand, like, half of it, but it was awesome!” The physical side of it sort of bridges the language gap. Someone from somewhere else might not understand what it’s like to be in a hotel in Torquay, but the visuals and the language are so quick that you’re along for the ride. I think it translates to pretty much everybody.
Would your characters be different in a 2025 reboot of the show?
Danny Bayne: I think the only thing that would change would be the fashion choices. There’d be less browns and greens.
Mia Austen: Sybil was meant to be 34, and she looks like a woman in her 50s. That would probably be the biggest change.
Danny Bayne: That’s very true. When you tell people that John was 35 when he played Basil, people genuinely can’t believe it. But it was a really long time ago. I think the set would probably look slightly different, and the colors would look different, and the costumes would look different, but the language wouldn’t necessarily change that much, because people haven’t changed that much. We’ve had quite a lot of people bring kids, when they first came, we weren’t entirely sure how eight year olds would take it, and they are wetting themselves.
Mia Austen: You often hear them howling. It’s so lovely to hear all these little laughs coming out.
Helen Lederer: I think this connects completely. It was written some time ago, but it’s not in a time warp. I just completely identify with all of it.
Paul Nicholas: The Major would be an old man like me, no difference.
Hemi Yeroham: Manuel would maybe not be from Spain, because I think most Europeans speak good English nowadays.
Paul Nicholas: Great comedy is sort of timeless. I Love Lucy, for example, with Lucille Ball, you can see how it kind of still works. The comedy would still work, but you’d put more technology in it. The same frustration would still be there. And the Englishness.
Hemi Yeroham: Our attitudes towards foreign nations, passive aggression… All of those are very, very present still, I feel.
Fawlty Towers is now booking at the Apollo Theatre until 13 September – find your tickets here
