Four-lty Towers

Launceston’s Encore Theatre is in the midst of a sell out season of their production of ‘Fawlty Towers’. In past years the theatre has veered away from its musical origins and taken to playing some classic British TV shows. Last year they performed ‘Allo Allo’ which followed a successful season of ‘Are you being served’. With such success the theatre decided they were on to a winning formula and so this year they are performing four episodes of ‘Fawlty Towers’.

Jamie Hillard is the director of the play and I spoke to him recently about why he thinks these takes on classic TV shows are so successful.

Jamie says most of these TV shows have a cult following and are kept vibrant by the DVD releases. ‘Fawlty Towers’ with only 12 episodes made is a rare gem among British comedies.

Almost everyone knows something about this clever, as opposed to the slapstick of some British comedies. Jamie finds the audiences are so enamoured of the series that they are saying word for word the lines along with the actors as well as being familiar with Basil Fawlty’s ‘goose-step’ and and while some of the time sensitive puns might go over modern audiences heads the image of stick spider basil is universally found funny.

With another eight episodes for the taking it would seem the group will stay close to their theatrical home and have encore dramatisations of Fawlty Towers in future seasons.

Meticulous attention has been given to these four episodes with an effort to have the cast resembling the original cast as much as possible. There is also a remote controlled rat starring in the infamous rat episode where Manuel’s innocent belief he has a pet hamster causes all sorts of chaos for the restaurant when it gets loose.

A special Sybil Fawlty wig was flown in to take it’s rather overpowering role in the play at the cost of 400 dollars!

There is of course a bit of political in-correctness floating around and landing on people just like the famous moose head but thankfully the moose head at least is light-hearted and made of polystyrene.

There may be good safety conditions on set but the cast has had to really forge ahead with a case of the show must go on as many of them have succumbed to the flu season. Jamie believes the stellar hard work of his cast with long hours has caused a drop in immunity levels and so they have picked up any nasty bugs circulating.

With the success of this ‘Fawlty Towers’ there are plans to bring to the stage more, with ‘Black Adder’ and ‘Dads Army’ on the drawing boards.

Jamie says although they would like to tour with the production the fact that the volunteer cast have their day jobs to think of together with the difficulty in securing accommodation and most importantly a theatre when most are booked out 2 years in advance are also factors which prevent encore touring at the moment.

However you can see Encore Theatre’s production of ‘Fawlty Towers’ at the Earls Arts Centre, Launceston from July 12 to 28.
Paula Xiberras