Donald Sinclair served a distinguished military career in the Royal Navy during WWII, he was twice sunk (by a U-boat from below and an airstrike from above) and left a decorated Lieutenant commander a year after the cessation of hostilities. He then married and opened an unremarkable hotel in the middling British seaside town of Torquay.
Doomed to sink once more, this time into placid obscurity, he was wrenched from the undertow of history by a visit from John Cleese and his serpentine cohorts. Sinclair’s sniffery, sudden tempers and appalling hosting struck Cleese as suggestive of something fundamentally English with remarkable comic potential, and the brave Naval officer turned seaside bastard became the model for Basil Fawlty. Since 1997, faintly frightening theatrical entrepreneur Alison Pollard-Mansergh (overheard in Pleasance Dome plotting ‘world domination’ via themed crap dinners) has been bringing Cleese’s experience full-circle, and providing an interactive meal in a simulated Fawlty Towers. Think Westworld if you swapped out the cowboys for Auntie’s national treasures and the robots for Australians.
Faulty Towers – the Dining Experience, presumably misspelled as a sacrifice to whatever arcane ceremony granted them the rights to produce it, is now in its fifth year in Edinburgh, and continues to provide crowd-pleasing mayhem for an audience thrilled to have their soup spiked and their nationality lampooned by a ranting simulacrum of beloved Basil.
A full three-course meal is mis-served in a two hour farce that plays out like an interactive greatest hits for Britain’s fifth favourite sitcom (according to a 2004 poll in which it was smashed by The Vicar of Dibley, offering a final proof that democracy just doesn’t work). Manuel introduces us to his rat, Manuel gets hoofed down the stairs by the enraged proprietor, a fire drill ends in disaster and, yes, Basil goose-steps through the restaurant wearing his underpants on his head.
The cast can’t conceal their antipodean origins, but their performances are convincing recreations and their improvisation skills genuinely impressive. Jordan Edmeades takes a bit of getting used to as Basil, being twenty years too young and infinitely too Australian, but with spot-on physicality and an ear-splitting Cleese-esque shriek, he forms the perfect centre point for the escalating carnage. Anthony Sottile is a winning Manuel, eliciting considerable sympathy as he is thrashed across the restaurant and makes a bungle of the bread rolls. Best of all is Karen Hamilton’s Sybil (a role she alternates with Pollard-Mansergh) who totters between the tables apologising for her frothing husband and occasionally aiming a fierce blow at his testicles.
The energy levels start high and stay there, and though two hours is a long time to be trapped in a farce, but Pollard-Mansergh, in her role as director, effectively maintains the balance between actual meal and theatrical experience. There’s plenty of time to talk to your fellow diners, usually to complain about the food, which incidentally is awful, but there’s also always something exciting to see or get involved with. An American couple stormed out after finding a pair of dentures in their soup, I initially felt similarly put-off by having a bowl of soup in the middle of my show, but approached with the right attitude the enthusiasm and authenticity of the cast sees the barmy venture through.
That question of authenticity is skewed in fascinating directions by Faulty Towers: it’s high tea with the hyper-real and Baudrillard’s serving drinks. Theatre is full of two-fold impersonations, but they rarely force Mediterranean Chicken down your throat. Still, if you can keep total existential collapse at bay the Dining Experience makes the meal from hell surprisingly palatable.
