Fawlty Tours 

I’ve decided that Fawlty Tours is the perfect title for being on the road with John. Although I’m not exactly Manuel material. The play version of Fawlty Towers opens in Sydney in August and stars our ex Australian Lancelot as Basil. I hope they have better luck than Spamalot did. It was always a tremendous disappointment the way it was produced here, for it opened very well in a wonderful production in Melbourne and then having spent (wasted) a fortune on lavishly shipping things and people back and forth from New York, instead of moving on to other cities they simply closed. The entire production. They said they couldn’t find anywhere else to play. Not Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth or Auckland. I couldn’t believe it.

Our New York producers, who knew everything about Broadway, sadly repeated the same pattern in London, flying people and costumes back and forth from New York, as if theatre had never been done before in the UK. The most egregious waste of money was they sent one actor all the way from Melbourne to Broadway to “show to” Mike. Because he was busy she was holed up in a NY Hotel for 8 days before he could hear her sing one song and then said “She’s fine” and she was flown all the way back. They did the same with costumes. For London they simply flew in a NY producer to sit in the UK for a couple of years to produce. Nuts.

Happily, shortly thereafter we split with the Producers, and now in conjunction with the admirable TRW we license performances all round the world. And instead of lavishly flying Broadway people in we permit them to make their own productions, like real theatre. This has worked very well in Spain, France, Mexico, Sweden, Norway, Poland, Japan, etc etc. It’s Denmark’s turn next year, although the Danish producers keep bugging me to produce a little promo film for their big announcement in May. I hesitated for a while as I misread it as a little porno film, and I felt even for Denmark that was too much, but now I get it. They want something for the launch about how thrilled I am they are mounting this in the homeland of the depressive schizophrenic ham. Alright, alright, I’ll get to it, but I am working you know. We haven’t got much longer on the road. Three nights in Melbourne, from tonight and then just Auckland and Wellington and we’re done and dusted. Mind you this tour has done very well. Totally sold out, and standing room in Sydney, and I don’t think there are any seats left here in Melbourne. I believe you can get into the second night in Auckland, but you have to bring a sheep. It’s a two for one deal.

Anyway I’m sure Fawlty will do very well here. Every night in the Q and A there are always at least eight questions about The TV Series. Usually all the same, about whether it will come back, or was Manuel really hurt. John never picks them, though he does talk about the production. As I say I think it will do very well and he comes back in August to keep a watchful eye on his players. It was first mounted very successfully in Scandinavia by our great Scandinavian Spamalot director Anders Moon, who made a huge hit of it. So there is a great precedent.

The one amazing thing John reveals to me is that while there are Fawlty Towers characters and dining experiences all over the world, that clear a million dollars of profit a year, they do not pay him a single penny! So I hope he cleans up on the play.

Fawlty Tours spent Saint Paddy’s day flying to Melbourne, where it was a lovely warm day and then I took the bride out to a nice romantic dinner in The Atlantic restaurant which is part of the new Crown hotel and casino which has magically arisen since we were last here. The food was excellent, but their “pours” were extraordinarily parsimonious. I asked cheekily if there was a wine shortage in Australia after one sommelier hardly reached the half way mark in a wine sold by the glass. Same with the wife’s champers, and she looked shocked. Barely half way which at thirty bucks a glass is a real rip off. Not good chaps.

Perhaps they felt we had had too much the night before in Sydney saying farewell, with the amazing Erica Gregan pouring. Now there’s a lass who knows how to fill a glass. We were sad to leave Sydney, it all went too fast, and the audiences were great. And now for the great St.Patricks hangover day it’s raining here. Ah well, a good day to catch up with correspondences and grumble about producers.

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