Basil's back in business...and he's as rude as ever

THE lines, the laughs, even the accents and intonations of the greatest British sitcom ever, Fawlty Towers, are present and correct in this efficient and energetic stage adaptation, but it’s an oddly soulless affair.

Fawlty Towers the Play
Apollo Theatre
Nick Curtis

John Cleese’s ragefully impotent Torquay hotelier Basil Fawlty is uncannily reincarnated by Adam Jackson-Smith. We delight in his barely edited Seventies rudeness, his hubristic comeuppances, his abuse of hapless Catalan waiter Manuel … but it feels like an exercise in zombie nostalgia.

Ex-Python Cleese co-wrote and co-starred in the two peerless series of FT with his then wife Connie Booth, who played Polly. Here he has spliced together three episodes: The Germans and The Hotel Inspectors from 1975 and Communication Problems from 1979.