Garter Lane Arts Centre and Dooley’s Hotel brought the Interactive Theatre Australia production of their hit comedy dinner presentation into The Ship Restaurant at Dooley’s and this Faulty Towers – The Dining Experience, was a side splitting event where bread rolls were thrown, tantrums were indulged and three top class actors recreated (only much better) the mayhem and madness of Fawlty Towers with spot on routines, great mimicry, hilarious ad-libs and Basil, Sybil and Manuel look-alikes.
As the audience gathered in the hotel foyer, a weird and manic Basil (Michael Davoren) called out the names and a shrill domineering Sybil shrieked Baz-ill and a bumbling Manuel showed people to the various tables. People were a little apprehensive, unsure what to expect but thanks to good organisation by Lilly, John and Sinead at
Garter Lane and a great Dooley’s staff, people got a fine meal, after a slow build-up and one of the best dinner shows I have ever been at. I ached with laughter as this trio went wild with food service, fire drills, interactive routines, physical knockabout farce. (Manuel was stabbed with a fork). Faulty and Manuel crawled under tables, emerging with knickers and a rat, or rather, a hamster. There were false teeth in the soup and all around me, Hearnes, Quinlans, Moylans, Caffreys, McEvoys, Quanns and Leahys rocked with laughter.
This type of theatre or interactive physical comedy isn’t easy and a routine where Manuel (Daley Donnelly) stood up on our table, left me weak with laughter, as he combed my wife’s hair, with a fork!
Sybil (the devisor of the show, Alison Pollard Mansergh) was menacing to the others as well as the audience and by the end it got almost out of hand with mayhem, much frantic running about and an activated fire extinguisher routine was hilarious.
I was resolved beforehand that if I found false teeth in my soup that I would say nothing about it.
Interactive Theatre Australia also do Murder On The Menu, Bawdy Banquets, Ab-Fab Girls, Rocky Horror, Mission Impossible and a Blackadder Banquet. So, let’s have more of them.
Another Australian company are touring a UK version of Death By Chocolate, a murder mystery. In 18 performances they get through 325 bars of luxury chocolate and 2,700 truffles.
