Fawlty Towers stage show to tour the UK
The Fawlty Towers stage show will tour the UK next year, John Cleese has revealed.
The classic sitcom adaptation has been a critical and box office success at the Apollo Theatre in London and has now had its run at the venue extended until 1st March (tickets available via Ticketmaster).
Then, from 25th September till July 1st, the play, which stars Adam Jackson-Smith, Anna-Jane Casey, Hemi Yeroham and Victoria Fox, will tour the UK before returning to London's West End.
"It's just wonderful to see people laughing like that" Cleese said of the stage production on the BBC's Morning Live this morning. "Because when I was growing up with all those great sitcoms, and of course Tommy Cooper, Max Wall, Morecambe & Wise, people used to laugh more than they do now and I think people miss it a bit so there's a little bit of nostalgia in the audience when they're laughing."
Tickets for the UK tour go on sale next month, with venues yet to be announced, though Cleese did confirm that the show will be coming to Fawlty Towers' spiritual home, Torquay. It was Monty Python's dreadful stay in the now demolished Gleneagles Hotel there that inspired the sitcom.
"Yes, they've never given me a hard time in Torquay, I think the publicity is worth the insult" he joked, speaking via video link from Brussels.
Cleese added that he never imagined that Fawlty Towers "would match Python in terms of audience popularity and its actually in a funny kind of way [attracted] even bigger audiences, especially in the UK."
Meanwhile, John Thomson said on ITV's This Morning today that An Evening With The Fast Show will resume touring the UK in October next year.