"Fawlty Towers". New Theatre
The Pythons have never been above revisiting - and profiting from - their back catalogue. From Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl to Spamalot , audiences have been all too ready to line up, cough up, and then laugh themselves hoarse at jokes they've already heard a million times before. What makes it worse is that the classic routines created for TV and film aren't anything like as funny when performed on stage. "OH YES, THE NORWEGIAN BLUE", shouts Michael Palin so the people in the back row can hear, and all the subtlety and subversive originality that characterised the Parrot Sketch when it first undermined the conventions of British comedy are lost in a welter of two-dimensional nostalgia. And so it is with Fawlty Towers , a touring K-Tel hits selection of some of the most memorable bits of the 70s sitcom sensation. When Manuel announces, "I know naaathing", the audience bursts into applause in the same way they might clap at the opening bars of a b...