★★★½☆ Stage adaptation is faithful to John Cleese’s sitcom if not quite as funny.

Roslyn Packer Theatre, Sydney
August 20, 2016

As soon as the jaunty theme music for Fawlty Towers begins, there is laughter and instantaneous applause from the audience. Then more laughter, as the music (written by Dennis Wilson and inspired by Beethoven’s Minuet in G) continues beyond the few bars we know so well into something a little more discordant, promising a show that combines nostalgic familiarity with a twist of the new.

In fact, Fawlty Towers Live, written by John Cleese, is a resolutely faithful stage adaptation of three of the episodes that he originally co-wrote with his then-wife Connie Booth, who played Polly to his Basil in the iconic BBC sitcom. Familiarity is the name of the game, providing plenty of laughter of recognition.

^{Blazey Best and Stephen Hall. Photo by James D. Morgan}

First broadcast in the UK in 1975, the idea for the television series was famously inspired by a visit to Torquay in 1970 when the Monty Python team stayed at the Gleneagles Hotel in Torquay where Cleese was intrigued by the incredibly rude...