If you love the original show, you'll find Faulty Towers The Dining Experience, that’s based on the BBC TV series Fawlty Towers, an experience.
Instead of being a passive consumer, you’re now part of the set, ready to be picked on as you immerse yourself into the establishment run by Torquay’s most inept and chaotic hoteliers, Basil, Sybil and Manuel. It’s a fun night out and the three performers, Nerine Skinner who plays Sybil, Lawrence Watling who acts as Basil and Leigh Kelly’s Manuel, inhabit their spirit well, closely impersonating the mannerisms and voices of the original characters.
Their set pieces loosely recreate classic scenes from the TV series about pet rats, fire drills and goose-stepping, but refrain from replicating any of the lines as part of this lived experience. As part of the privilege, the audience customers are served up with a three-course dinner in one of London’s central hotels: butternut squash soup, roast chicken and a cheesecake dessert, with vegetarian and vegan options also available. And while the food has none of the modern European sophistication or experimentation with flavours that one would normally expect in today’s restaurants, it’s certainly aptly 1970s.
In between the courses, you’re suitably involved and insulted by the hotelier, Basil Fawlty, whose contempt for the customers is only thinly veiled by the veneer of British formality and faux politeness. He’s most afraid though of his wife, Sybil, by whom he’s kept on a tight lease as he tries antics such as using Manuel to secretly place bets on the horses. If his bet wins, it might secure a different life for him. But of course, it’s not going to happen, not least because his communication with the hapless Manuel is so ridiculously thwarted by the cultural and language barriers between the Spaniard and his frustrated English employer.
It’s a creative theatrical idea and a brave attempt to take an established and much-loved TV classic to another level, suitably changing the original “Fawlty” to “Faulty” in this interactive experience. What’s lacking, though, is consistent narrative because the skits are unrelated and the evening fails to build up to a crescendo. Instead, it’s a foray into an evening at Fawlty Towers. And while it has no connection to the original writers or actors, John Cleese and Connie Booth, or to the BBC, it’s something that even the disdainful Basil Fawlty might reluctantly applaud.