Fawlty Towers At The Apollo
Time for Scrabble and chit chat with Sharon Gerber Scherer this afternoon at Qulture, then, this evening is a fundraiser at La Catrina Cantina to help Angeloo, Vallarta’s 12-year-old singing wunderkind, win the Voz de Zapopan. A full report on those goodies in the morning.
My luck has turned from indifferent to wretched back to good after winning the first bingo game at Awaysis Rio on Monday. And, because it is a non-tournament day, I should do well at Scrabble!
Before my sister Patrice and I left for Europe last month, we had already decided on what play we would see for sure while in London. We had lots of recommendations on how to easily spend a fortune in the West End, and wandered from box office to box office, checking on the availability of such monumental productions as Evita, Les Mis, Cabaret, and so many more.
Fawlty Towers, at the Apollo Theatre it was for a matinee mid-week. We settled into our seats, drinks in hand, cameras put away, of course, and laughed for the next 90 minutes. It was extraordinary to me that that stellar cast could be cloned and brought back to life 50 years after the BBC first aired the show written by and starring John Cleese and his then-wife, Connie Booth.
The production, adapted for the stage by John Cleese, was an amalgam of at least three episodes of the 12 that were produced over two seasons, four years apart, starting in 1975 and finishing in 1979.
If you are unfamiliar with this irreverent series, that likely would not be made today in our sanitized times of political correctness, check it out on YouTube. If you are a John Cleese or Monty Python fan, this is what you will see in London – and you can thank me later.
PBS out of Seattle used to run Fawlty Towers marathons back in the late 80s, and I would have our staff over for special Bloody Marys. We would sit, drink, and watch as many episodes as we could, shrieking with laughter and joining the dialogue whenever we remembered the lines. One of my prized possessions remains the boxed set of all 12 episodes on DVD. And some of my fondest memories of Sundays, TV, and Canada, all rolled together with dear friends, came to life again onstage in London.
One of the quirky things about the series was that the letters on the hotel sign, Fawlty Towers, would be juggled for each episode – Flowery Twats being one that was rather memorable and not used by the current stage production. The signs were, are, always funny and a piece of minutiae that is so perfectly British and acceptable if read aloud with the correct English accent and introduced with a fresh flourish of violins.
Seeing Fawlty Towers live was, right up there with eating delightful Swedish pastries, one of the highlights of our trip.
How I would have loved to embrace the cast afterwards, but that’s a Vallarta thing.