"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 beloved song. This is a show that unquestionably loves Fawlty Towers, a show that delights in reciting Fawlty Towers, and a show that weaves episodes together into a Torquay-flavoured patchwork quilt of Fawlty Towers. But ultimately it's a pale imitation. A tribute band. Fauxlty Towers. 

John Cleese and Connie Booth's masterpiece (even with its now-questionable dips into racial slurrism) was the greatest TV comedy ever made not because it was a collection of farcical situations, slapstick pratfalls and funny goose-stepping. It was great because it explored the limits of social embarrassment in ways that had never been attempted before. Basil Fawlty was a monstrous creation, but he was one we could just about sympathise with. He embodied the prejudices that skulked just below the surface of British society in the 70s, and in laughing at him we were simultaneously confronting the dark side of ourselves. It had to be like that, because it wouldn't have worked any other way. In Basil we had the descendant of Shakespeare's Falstaff, and the precursor to David Brent and Larry David.

To take away the essential nature of what made Fawlty Towers great, and replace it with a sequence of "Best of" moments panders to the low-hanging fruit of cherished memories. The visuals are there, but not the substance. It's like a punchline without a joke. Icing without a cake. Sex without love. An empty experience.*

Cleese himself put the script together, and it competently combines the plots of The Hotel Inspectors, Communication Problems and The Germans. Each episode has room to breathe, and the crossover sections make sense. The actors too have clearly studied their roles until they can recapture almost every facet of the originals. Mia Austen as Sybil brays exactly like the immortal, and sadly missed, Prunella Scales. Hemi Yeroham does a convincing Andrew Sachs as Manuel. And Adam Elliott (understudying for the inexplicably absent Danny Bayne) does as good a Basil as you're ever likely to see outside Cleese himself. The problem is not the quality of the impersonations, but the fact that that is all they are. It's like watching talented session musicians trying to play a David Gilmour guitar solo. They may play all the right notes, but the spark of genius is missing. 

Perhaps that's why some of the most enjoyable details of this show are those rare moments when it dares to step out from the shadow of the 1976 vintage. Basil's uncorking of the Aloxe-Corton 1965 becomes a more elaborate display of strained heaving than even Cleese managed, and it's hilarious. Manuel repeats "The pate and the lamb" in the tones of the customer, rather than frantically running off saying "thepatelambthepatelambthepatelamb" as Sachs did, and again, just seeing a new approach breathes life into the production. Paul Nicholas as Major Gowen has a new speech about the Japanese having invented ingrowing toenail operations. It's not in the original script, but it so easily could have been, and it hints at what a stage version aimed at remaking rather than replaying could have achieved. 

In fact, Nicholas is the unexpected star of this Fawlty Towers. Rather than simply aping Ballard Berkeley he brings a new dimension to the role: more stiff upper lip, less bombastic xenophobia. He comes alive, and it's no surprise that he gets the biggest cheer at the curtain calls. 

But for the most part, despite all the talent on display, this production just reminds you how brilliant the TV show was. One moment illustrates this perfectly. When the cantankerous Mrs Richards complains that she can't see the sea from her window, Basil replies, "Yes you can, it's over there, between the land and the sky". In the original show, John Cleese pointed outside, and the movement of his finger from down to up somehow captured the frustration, the obviousness, and the strained formality of the situation, in one impotent but hilarious prod. Adam Elliott, for all his acting skill, can't do that. If he could, he would have been John Cleese.

Cleese of course is entitled to make every penny he can out of his creation, and Fawlty Towers is no doubt helping keep up the payments to his four ex-wives. For those who like to sing along, it's a fun night out that brings back simpler days and fewer TV channels. 

But every bowdlerisation cheapens the original. Every fake diamond dims the crown. Fawlty Towers should be for all time. This show trades it for a quick buck. 

*Although, as Woody Allen said of sex without love, as empty experiences go, it's one of the best.