Fawlty Flowers

There was a time – long, long ago in a far distant land – when Fawlty Towers was the funniest thing on TV.

The snide, subversive wit of John Cleese as the incompetent hotelier putting down his fellow man seemed so sophisticated that it triggered very unsophisticated snorts of laughter.

Until I watched an episode more recently, cringed instead of laughing, and realised how far comedy has evolved since those pioneering days.

Now a parody of the original farce has come to Sandton’s Theatre on the Square in Fawlty Flowers, with Annie Robinson and Mark Mulder playing the squabbling hoteliers Basil and Sybil Fawlty. The pair has been performing this two-hander in KwaZulu Natal for two years, with the show devised and directed by Paul Spence.

It’s a selection of the original sketches presented in the tongue-in-cheek style of theatre within a theatre, and starts with the warm touch of Robinson and Mulder mingling in the foyer, popping up behind the bar, then chivvying us inside so their performance can begin.

The stage set is suitably shambolic, with a few props scattered around that they rearrange to make a passable stab at a hotel in Torquay in a certain era. But that era was 1975, when comedy often involved insulting foreigners, being supercilious and when Basil’s rudeness and Sybil’s bitchy retorts were considered the height of irreverent wit.

Fawlty Towers was written Cleese and his wife Connie Booth, who played Polly the chambermaid, and since they’d divorced by the time they wrote the second series the marital bickering between Basil and Sybil certainly felt authentic.

While the original TV show had the luxury of extra performers, here the two actors play everyone, except when the part is admirably filled by a jacket and cap on a hat-stand. Robinson shrugs herself into a white jacket and adds a massive moustache to mimic Manuel, the sweet but uncomprehending Spanish waiter, or bursts from a low-cut top as pretty Polly.

The antics are all very deliberately amateurish, and the big question is does it work. Here I’m oddly ambivalent. Some of the audience found every movement hysterical. I found snippets of it funny, some a little tedious, and much of it just too anachronistic. Nostalgic, if you prefer a softer word.

Its strongest points are the original scripts, which instantly win over anyone from that era whose taste hasn’t changed, and the whole attitude of irreverence, with Robinson and Mulder sending themselves up rather than trying to recreate the original too closely. They capture the main personalities very well, with Sybil’s withering glances, horsey laughter and big bouffant hairdo, and Basil’s exaggerated movements and pompous ambitions.

At times they drop down from the stage to interact with the audience and make you feel involved rather than a detached observer, and I imagine it would work much better in a supper club where they can freely mingle with diehard Fawlty fans who will appreciate it.

Fawlty Flowers had returned to Sandton’s Auto & General Theatre on the Square until October 26. Tickets from Computicket.