Sit-down from sitcom

You can’t refuse squirrel-faced Manuel. Not even when he holds out a salver of almonds and says — in his thick Spanish accent — “Would you like my nuts?” Mangling the English language in ways that are endearingly his own, Manuel, or the ‘alter ego’ of the waiter who first bumbled through the 12 episodes of the British television classic of the ’70s, Fawlty Towers, was recently spotted in Mumbai, Delhi and Chennai. He was part of the Australian tribute show Faulty Towers: The Dining Experience; a fixture at fringe festivals for 17 years, and a runaway hit at venues like London’s Royal Albert Hall and the Sydney Opera House.

Driving diners to distraction at sit-down meals at Taj properties in India — featuring asparagus and toasted pine nut soup, country roast chicken, baked polenta, forest mushroom ragout and French opera cake — the performances were largely impromptu. Barely one-third of the production relied on set pieces from its small screen namesake like the discovery of Manuel’s ‘hamster’ rat. And they always ended in a sound thrashing of Manuel (Anthony Scottile) by his employer and owner of the fictional Faulty Towers hotel Basil Faulty (Robert Langston), and much tut-tutting by the latter’s wife Sybil (Karen Hamilton).

Hamilton, who has been with the show the longest and travelled to about 20 countries with it, claims audiences in India are hard to offend and “naughtier”. Whether they are fans of the original sitcom or oblivious to it, they seem primed for supper theatre that feeds off diners’ interjections and (coaxed) reactions. In Mumbai, for instance, when the banquet manager had to be summoned to redress a real situation on the first night, Sybil’s screeches and the ensuing mayhem generated such mirth in the audience (who were tweeting about it), that the cast had to repeat the ‘act’ every night. There was also a spot of ‘matchmaking’ for a lawyer, whose mother chided the Faultys and told them they were doing it all wrong, until the clueless cast learnt to enquire about sun signs of prospective brides.

But bringing down the third wall between the players and the audience can have its perils. Although Scottile only weakly complains about the serial bottom-pinching of Manuel by 70-year-olds, audiences often arrive as characters from the sitcom, demanding to be ‘included’. At performances in India, however, no Lord-without-a-first-name or Polly, the chambermaid, made a special appearance.

In a show ‘stuck’ in the ’70s, resisting words like Tourettes or seriously (as a rhetoric) for years, the meal is incidental. Often an introduction to theatre — for fans of sports or television in Australia, or gourmands who rarely watch plays in India — Faulty Towers uses food as a prop. But for the hotel staff, who keep the drinks and dishes coming, there’s plenty of unlearning to do. With minute-by-minute instructions to make sure the false teeth appear in the soup on table X, or the fork goes missing from table Y, the real waiters, in whose DNA it is to do things ‘right’, must be prepped for disruption and unscripted pandemonium.

Yet, as producer Divya Palat says, “There is no normal in India,” and so it must follow that a faulty meal will be par for the Indian course.

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