Apollo Theatre

‘Fawlty Towers’ regularly tops polls of the best British TV comedies of all time. But in recent years, its co-creator and star John Cleese has become a lightning rod for criticism for his proclamations that so-called ‘wokeness’ is killing comedy. So, how does his stage version of hapless hotel owner Basil Fawlty – arriving ahead of his TV remake of the series with his daughter – fare in the ‘funny’ stakes? From Liz Ascroft’s detailed, 1970s-in-aspic set design – encompassing the titular Torquay hotel’s reception, dining room and an upstairs guest room – to the elaborate coiffure of Basil’s wife, Sybil (Anna-Jane Casey), Caroline Jay Ranger’s production leans so heavily on nostalgia, it’s amazing that it doesn’t crash through the stage. Ranger has form in turning iconic British TV shows that live partly in people’s rose-tinted memories into theatre: she directed ‘Only Fools and Horses The Musical’ a few years ago. As Basil (Adam Jackson-Smith) attempts to evade Sybil’s watchful gaze while dealing with barely concealed contempt with the hotel’s guests, we get a greatest hits parade of characters from the TV series’ two seasons. Theatre legend Paul Nicholas engagingly reanimates the absent-minded Major, Kate Russell-Smith and Nicola Sanderson wander in like extras from ‘Miss Marple’ as Miss Tibbs and Miss Gatsby and Hemi Yeroham gamely hams it up as the English-mangling Spanish waiter Manuel. As Basil, Jackson-Smith has the piano-string tautness of the younger Cleese’s voice...

This review is from the Kiln Theatre in April 2023. Retrograde will transfer to the West End in March 2025, with Ivanno Jeremiah returning ans a new supporting cast of Stanley Townsend (Mr Parks) and Oliver Johnstone (Bobby). Talk about a good year. Though up-and-coming playwright Ryan Calais Cameron laboured for aeons on his breakout play ‘For Black Boys Who Feel Suicidal When the Hue Gets Too Heavy’, it paid off in spades: after premiering at the tiny New Diorama and graduating to the prestigious Royal Court, it’s currently sitting pretty at the Apollo Theatre, his first West End hit. With a good wind, this might even be his second. Virtually the formal opposite of the impressionistic, freeform, fourth wall breaking ‘For Black Boys…’, ‘Retrograde’ is a snappy three-hander period drama about a specific historical figure at a specific moment in time: the trailblazing Black Hollywood actor Sidney Poitier on the cusp of signing his first major studio contract. The year is presumably 1956, and at first Poitier is conspicuously absent from the office of film studio bigwig Mr Parks (Daniel Lapine). He’s being buttered up by neurotic director Bobby (Ian Bonar), who is trying to sell him on the merits of his actor friend Sidney, who is supposed to be there to sign with the studio. But Bobby can sense hesitation from Parks. After the surreal realism of ‘For Black Boys…’ - in which the six titular Black British men discussed their feelings in a surreal, brightly coloured limbo -...