Fawlty Towers: The Play – Review – Bradford Alhambra
By Steve Crabtree, March 2026
Growing up, our living room shelf was home to three Fawlty Towers VHS tapes: the brown one, the blue one, and the green one. For some reason, the red one never made it into our collection, but as a kid I watched those nine episodes of Fawlty Towers on a loop.
I must have seen each one a hundred times or more, laughing along hard at nine-years-old even when many of the jokes may have flown right over my head. There was enough in there to keep me entertained.
Walking into the Alhambra Theatre in Bradford this week, all those memories were brought right back. None more so than when we walked in. Usually, you don’t get to see the set until a show actually starts, but here everything was open and waiting as we found our seats. What a “wow” moment. It was all there – the reception desk, the stairs, the dining room… looking identical to the 70s hotel I’ve spent a near lifetime watching on a screen.
I couldn’t wait for this!
“Torquay’s most dysfunctional hotel”
As we settled in, the rest of the audience were perhaps mostly made up of people who were glued to their three-channel TV sets when the show got its first airing on the BBC.
And when those iconic first notes of the theme tune finally rang out and the lights dimmed, you just smiled. We weren’t just here for the play; we were checking back into Torquay’s most dysfunctional hotel.
But what were we in for? Something new? Something classic?
Well, what I loved most about Fawlty Towers – The Play was that we got a clever reinvention of the DNA of ‘Communication Problems’, ‘The Germans’, and ‘The Hotel Inspector’ and John Cleese had weaved them together into a single, chaotic narrative.
Far from being a ‘best of’ sketch show, it became one long, increasingly stressful day for the Fawlty staff… and a hilarious evening for all us guests.
“Frantic energy”
Danny Bayne had the unenviable task of stepping into Mr Fawlty’s shoes. He was brilliant, capturing the height and the frantic energy of the John Cleese original, and fully giving us the easily annoyed and rude hotel owner we all know he is. But he added quite a lot of his own Basil into it (don’t tell Manuel! Ok, that’s enough of the puns!) Where a simple knee-bend reaction to bad wine worked on the small screen, Bayne leaned into a full-bodied wretch that played perfectly to every viewing angle in the theatre.
Opposite him, Mia Austin was a convincing Sybil. She had the “flying tart” persona down to a tee, and the chemistry (or lack of) between her and Basil mirrored the original perfectly. That’s even before the hair and wardrobe department did their bit.
In fact, the casting across the whole production was top-tier. Joanna Clifton’s Polly had the voice down to an absolute tee, while Hemi Yeroham brought a slightly more confident brand of chaos to Manuel than the bumbling buffoon Andrew Sachs gave us. It worked. As did Paul Nicholas’ Major Gowan, delivering some of those famous lines from the forgetful old-timer with a slightly calmer style.
“Howled and laughed all night”
The play panned out nicely, with the deaf woman Mrs Richards saving her batteries, Mr Richardson the spoon salesman twisting his tongue round words to cause heightened frustration to Basil, and The Germans checking in not long after a ‘talking’ moose lands on Mr Fawlty’s head.
We howled and laughed all night. And the beauty of Fawlty Towers – The Play is that even when you know the punchline is coming, the execution still kills. It wasn’t about surprise; it was about the joy of seeing these legendary moments live.
My friend and I did wonder if, in this day and age, ‘the funny walk’ would make an appearance when the German contingent were around the dinner table. Well, we’d been told “don’t mention the war!”, so I’m not going to mention the walk even once (even though I think I’d get away with it..!”)
“Left us wanting more”
Act two is punchy and short – barely thirty minutes – which felt like a deliberate nod to the show’s legacy. Just as writers John Cleese and Connie Booth famously stopped after two series to ensure they went out on top, Fawlty Towers – The Play doesn’t overstay its welcome. It just left us wanting more.
What we did get at the finale was the fire drill, and a more chaotic lobby than we saw in the TV show… and as the final few minutes brought in nods to ‘The Kipper and the Corpse’ and my personal favourite, ‘Basil the Rat’, the laughter in the room was loud.
It’s a masterclass in farce, and a reminder of why we fell in love with this miserable hotelier in the first place. What a brilliant play, and I’m so glad I came to see it.
You will too – whether you’ve seen the episodes once or a thousand times.
Fawlty Towers – The Play continues its run at the Alhambra Theatre, Bradford, until 28th March
Images: Hugo Glendinning
Give Steve music, give him food, give him theatre, tech or travel… and he’s a happy man. He’s been writing professionally since 2003, turning to journalism in 2017 when it offered him the chance to enjoy a lot of his existing passions, and learn some new ones at the same time. Steve can be found spending many of his summer nights watching bands at The Piece Hall in his hometown of Halifax, or enjoying a bite to eat and a drink with his wife anywhere in Yorkshire at any time of year. Random fact: He does the best impression of Zippy and George from Rainbow that anyone has ever heard.
