‘Fawlty Towers’ stage adaptation will cut offensive lines

The first preview for the West End adaptation of “Fawlty Towers — The Play,” based on the legendary British comedy series created by and starring John Cleese and Connie Booth, hits the boards later this week. The show is an amalgamation of three of the 12 episodes (yes, there were only 12 30-minute episodes) of the zany resort-set series, one of which is the most famous: “The Germans.”

Most remember that episode for the catchphrase “don’t mention the war,” the talking moose, and Cleese goosestepping around his humble Torquay hotel lobby. But it also included its share of envelope-pushing material. Indeed, the character The Major – an old senile drunk played by Ballard Berkeley – tells a rambling story about his time in India in which someone got their racial slurs confused. The scene includes the use of the N-word, as well as a derogatory term for Indians. 

In 2020, UKTV removed it, but later reinstated it after Cleese called the move “stupid.” 

At a press conference for the new show, however, Cleese – who has adapted the script from his and Booth’s earlier material – said that the offensive terms are not included any longer. But it’s not like he seemed too pleased about it. 

“Those scenes where the Major used a couple of words you can’t use now, racial slurs they would come under, we took them out,” he said, adding, “There’s always a problem with comedy that you deal with the literal-minded.”

He continued, “Whenever you’re doing comedy you’re up against the literal-minded and the literal-minded don’t understand irony. And that means if you take them seriously, you get rid of a lot of comedy. Because literal-minded people don’t understand metaphor, irony or comic exaggeration. People who are not literal-minded can see there are various different interpretations, depending on different contexts.”

“Fawlty Towers” ran for six episodes in 1975 and won the BAFTA for Best Scripted Comedy. The show returned in 1979 for another six adventures, and once again won for Best Scripted Comedy. Cleese, who starred as the uptight, anger-prone hotelier Basil Fawlty also won for Best Entertainment Performance. The show was twice adapted for American television, but it didn’t really connect. The first, “Amanda’s” from 1983, starred Bea Arthur, and the second, “Payne” in 1999, starred John Larroquette. 

A sequel series is in the works, written by Cleese and his daughter, Camilla Cleese, set in the Caribbean. 

Famously, the concept of the series was based on an actual seaside hotel (The Gleneagle) that Cleese stayed in with other cast members of Monty Python. The comedy troupe sat agog and watched how the place was run by one Donald Sinclair who was, by all accounts, just as nasty and deranged as Basil Fawlty. Sinclair died in 1981 from a stroke and heart attack after discovering that some workmen he’d angered had come and repainted his car and patio furniture in the middle of the night. You can just imagine Prunella Scales’s Sybil clucking “oh, Basil” upon learning the news.  

Here is now the dumbest, funniest thing that has ever appeared on television.

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