John Cleese appeared in the West End this week. ‘I’ve got vertigo,’ he said as he walked on stage at the Apollo, Shaftesbury Avenue. ‘I cannot get rid of it. So I’m behaving as if I’m 184 not 84.’ He was hosting a press conference for Fawlty Towers: The Play which opens this Saturday night. The press event began with three scenes from the show followed by a Q&A involving Cleese and the leading actors.
The character of Basil Fawlty was drawn from Cleese’s family background
The first questioner asked about the practical challenges of turning 12 sitcom episodes into a two-hour comedy. ‘It’s what I call carpentry, do you see what I mean?’ said Cleese in his faintly testy manner, like an impatient classics master. He said he was inspired to write farce after seeing Albert Finney in ‘A Flea In Your Ear’ by Georges Feydeau at the Old Vic. ‘I was in the 1960s.
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