Fawlty Towers - Apollo

I'd say this will definitely extend.

My major thought when leaving the theatre was "I need to see this on screen". Nothing done on stage is a patch on the original TV work.

Don't get me wrong - the cast do a strong job at mostly doing impressions with slightly different delivery styles. That's one of the strengths of this production and its biggest fault line, there's no originality and these performances obviously can not possibly exactly match the ones they are trying to imitate.

The problem is this adaptation is, in the most, a direct lift from the TV scripts and direction. Yes, it's moulded into a cohesive relatively well, but it feels like it was designed for TV with all the "scene change music" - which is really bizarre as the original TV series felt like it was at home on stage.

If this was another script entirely, like how Yes Prime Minister did their TV version many years later, it'd probably have greater merit - but here you can't help but long for Cleese, Scales, Booth et al to be on stage..

Extended until 4th January 2025

Surprised this is doing good business, but also not surprised - make sense?

I enjoyed this a lot more than I thought I would: the parts of Basil, Sybil and Polly were all played extremely well. Manuel I wasn’t so sure about but he was ok, but Paul Nicholas as the Major is by far the weakest link, they have scrubbed any trace of the political incorrectness from the original series/Ballard Berkeley days but with his scruffy hair they’ve made him into an absolute shower. No old school army officer would be seen dead in public with a sub Steptoe hairstyle like that. But thankfully they resisted the urge to turn it into a musical like OFAH, I’m thinking some of the applause was aimed at episodes of the series that have been watched over and over again (I’m thinking a Python thing was also involved) rather than the performers but I’ve spent evenings in theatres recently watching stuff that was far worse, I was never bored (even though I’m sure I’ve seen the episodes this was based on numerous times)

Does anyone know if this is likely to extend again beyond 4th January?

I think the networks would, as you suggest, run a success for ever if they could.  At one time they almost seemed to devote BBC3 to Two Pints.... (80 episodes) which, while it had its moments, was running embarrassingly out of steam (and stars!) long before it was discontinued.  

When it comes to series apparently finishing while there is plenty of juice in the fruit, sometimes the reasons appear obvious.  The clearest example is probably Father Ted (25) where it was thought impossible to replace the late Dermot Morgan.  Coupling (28) never survived the defection of Richard Coyle and most people I know think the Jeffless series 4 was a mistake.   But there must be cases where the creators decide to stop while they're still riding high.  I'm not an insider or any kind of expert but I note that, like Fawlty Towers, I'm Alan Partridge had a mere 12 episodes.  Off the top of my head I thought of the following (trying to exclude the ones already cited here) that I thought very good but which stopped below 30 episodes:


Black Books (18)
The League of Gentlemen (22)
The IT Crowd (25)
The Royle Family (25)

I'm sure there were lots more where unpopularity seems an unlikely reason for stopping.

I'm coming late to this thread and I have to say that, while it's great so many people enjoyed this show, I've read nothing to alter the decision I made when I first read of the project.  Which is that if I had hours to kill and no other show was available I'd probably go to the betting shop and watch the racing before going to this stage version of Fawlty Towers.  For one thing - and as several people have already said - screen to stage adaptations are even less likely to be convincing than stage to screen.   An exception was Kneehigh's Steptoe and Son but that was very different as, while they used the original script, they changed all the visuals making the stage version a surreal re-imagining.  Which, surprisingly as I'm not a Kneehigh fan, I found very convincing.

I've had the dvds of Fawlty Towers for years and know it almost by heart.  One consequence of that will be that the censorship of certain lines would be jarring for me.  I've also found that, having watched the episodes so many times, the comedy impact has really faded.  So going to see a stage show which, apart from censoring it, doesn't really depart from the original is of very limited appeal.  At least in the betting shop I won't know what's going to happen before it occurs!  I suppose comparing the acting performances with the originals might be interesting - but not interesting enough to make me buy a ticket.

Final extension until 1st March 2025.

UK and Ireland tour coming soon, according to the show's website.

How the British love their nostalgia. I saw this and it was just the TV series put on stage, which was amusing in the day, especially if you forget the horrendous racism. What people laughed at back then. Are we going to now get a slew of tv comedies put on stage?

However despite my reservations, it was well acted.

John Cleese likes to talk about his dire financial situation and therefore needs lots of ticket sales from a bigger venue.

This show is not about art its about dosh.

Perhaps we'll get an arena tour in 2026

Am off to see this tonight thanks to a nice little Today Tix rush ticket - a bargain at £25.

I got J7 stalls which was a great seat. I did enjoy it, yes, though it felt dated. Three understudies on - it found its gear in the second half. Definitely worth the money but I wouldn't see it again.