Entertaining improvised theatre

By Mahes Perera

The uproariously funny Fawlty Towers this brainchild of John Cleese gets another lease of life in the hands of the artistic director and show originator Allison Pollard - Mansergh of Interactive Theatre International. John Cleese' TV series of Fawlty Towers was voted number one in the BFI's 100 Greatest British Television Programmes in 2000 and the success of the show, apart from its funny scripts and excellent performances was the fact that the series ran for a mere 12 episodes and so never ran out of steam.

Now the Interactive Theatre International pays homage to John Cleese with their successful mission of Faulty Towers the Dining Experience, which will be staged at the Mount Lavinia Hotel June 4 to 8 with two matinee performances as well, to enable a wider spectrum of audience to enjoy comedy at its best.

Original

According to the artistic director Alison Pollard - Mansergh "Faulty is spelled that way because when I started the show in 1997, John Cleese, Prunella Scales and Andrew Sachs were still young enough to perform the roles.

I didn't want people to think they were getting the original, so I spelled it differently. Happily both they and the BBC are aware of what we are doing, and we work with the BBC a lot"

Born in Brisbane in 1997, Faulty Towers The Dining Experience is again on tour and makes it return to Sri Lanka with Karen Hamilton as Sybil Jordan Edmeades as Basil and Geoffrey Reczek as Manuel. The dialogue and the sit-com had the audience in stitches. It was delicious entertainment a two-hour eat, drink and laugh sensation.

Following a sold-out debut season last year Faulty Towers The Dining Experience arrives slap bang in the middle of a 20-country tour which includes debuts in Malaysia and Iceland.

Add to that the fact they've had their fair share of performances at the UK's Royal Albert Hall, Sydney, Opera House and at all the major arts festivals and as according to the blurbs an ongoing residency in London's West End. Comedies are not easy to create and to John Cleese the originator of Fawlty Towers the inspiration was an absolutely rude hotel proprietor he met while filming with his Monty Python team. Unwillingly the proprietor Donald Suiclair became the blue print for Basil Fawlty a frustrated, social, climbing middle-Englander and a comedy legend was born.

The roles of Basil, Sybil and Manuel in a setting of a pretty ordinary 'hotel', sparkles with the wit that runs through their dialogue. Basil's verbal tirades against his wife is only thus far and not beyond, because he is abruptly stopped by Sybil his wife with a shriek as she hollers "Basil".

Chaos

His attempts to satisfy the customers are a continues chaos until it is left to Sybil to smoothen the problems. Sybil on the other hand moves around the customers taking in their orders while socialising with the guests and intermittently shouting out her instructions to Basil and Manuel, urging them to attend to the customers' needs but nothing gets done until she has to step in to unravel the chaos. The lovable figure in the skit is the vulnerable Manuel the Spanish waiter. His awkward and childish manner triggers a series of laughs, but drives poor Basil crazy throughout the dinner.

Manuel's command of the English language confuses him, that he finds it difficult to tell the difference between the words 'Sybil' and 'the bill' which exasperates Basil no end!

But above all Manuel is fond of his hamster, and mourns for him when Basil commands him to put the hamster away and not allow it to run under the tables of the customers. It's a sit-com that you normally don't see on a stage.