Offstage Rebecca Norris and Dave Tremaine have been “happily unmarried for 13 years’. Their onstage characters, meanwhile, celebrated their 60th Wedding Anniversary earlier this year – not that you would ever describe Basil and Sybil Fawlty’s marriage as the most harmonious of unions. Rebecca and Dave and two of the stars of the smash-hit Edinburgh Fringe favourite Faulty Towers The Dining Experience, which embarks on its first Scottish Tour this October.
Set in the restaurant of ‘Faulty Towers’ hotel, the dining experience is the world’s most successful tribute to the BBC TV series Fawlty Towers and recreates classic moments from the sitcom using original scripts in a show that’s 70% improvised and fully immersive.
Fire drills, rats (Is hamster!), chaos and mayhem reign supreme as Basil, Sybil and Manuel serve a delicious 70’s three-course meal to their ‘guests’, as Scottish fans will soon discover when Faulty Towers The Dining Experience tours to Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Glasgow, Broughty Ferry, St Andrew’s and Elgin.
Rebecca, 43, and Dave, 44, have been playing Basil and Sybil in the show for nearly a decade now but the couple, who met at drama school and are both self-confessed Fawlty Towers fans, jokingly reveal playing the fictional couple can prove interesting.
“I get many different husbands in the show but the company do like to keep us together, I think because it brings down costs,” Rebecca laughs, not that she is complaining, she continues, “We do like working together because we work well together, but it’s also nice to work with other people too. That keeps things fresh.”
Playing any couple relies on chemistry and being a real-life couple can have its pros and cons.
“I don’t think it changes the chemistry between Basil and Sybil but there is one point in the show where Sybil has to hit Basil over the head with a tray. Sometimes that can be real,” says Rebecca before Dave chips in, “… and in everyday life I do sometimes get ‘the look’ and think, ‘Oh god, I’ve seen that look before. She’s bringing it home now.” They both laugh.
For Dave, playing Basil allows him to behave in a way that he never normally would. “In real life I am nothing like Basil. I avoid shouting and confrontation wherever I can, but for two hours as I get to be as rude as possible – for someone who worked in customer service in the past, I now get to say all the things I wanted to say then and get away with it.”
Rebecca adds, “The great thing about this show is that we can get away with almost anything if things go wrong, people just think it’s part of the show. For example, we do a fire drill but one night all the fire alarms did go off and the fire brigade were called…” Dave, takes over, “… and we had to evacuate the hotel and gather on the street outside. Entertaining there was a bit awkward, people kept coming up wanting photographs. In
the end we had to hide behind the fire engine.”
It’s not just the public that are fans of Faulty Towers Dining Experience, it’s garnered a few celebrity fans along the way, including the late Geoffrey Palmer who played Dr Price in the episode The Kipper and the Corpse and another very special TV cast member.
Rebecca reveals, “One night Andrew Sachs, the original Manuel, came to see us. Leigh Kelly was playing Manuel that evening and knew Andrew was coming in so I he was pretty nervous but Andrew really loved the show and it was great seeing the two Manuels chatted afterwards.”
Another night, Dave spotted comedy magician Gerry Sadowitz on the list of diners and mentioned it to Becky.
“I had no clue, Dave had to tell me who he was, so in the show I went up to him as Sybil and said, ‘It’s you, isn’t it? It’s you. It’s you. Look Basil, it’s Brian May’.”
Rebecca effortlessly slips into the shrill tones of Sybil for that last line – it’s uncanny, although she admits nailing her character’s famous laugh, once described by Basil as ‘someone machine-gunning a seal’ – was a bit more tricky.
“The laugh was difficult. Although I could do it, the retraction at the end of it can takes its toll when doing it show after show. I had to find a way to do it without loosing my voice and I did – I can do it all the time now.”
For Dave it’s the physicality between Basil and Manuel that can prove a problem. He recalls once incident, “There’s a lot of slapstick between Basil and Manuel. At one point, I have to push him up against a wall. On this occasion I pushed him a little too hard, unaware that it was only a thin plaster wall. He went right through the wall making an almighty hole. I felt so guilty but being in character I had to go with it and spent the
rest of the show trying to patch up the wall to make sure Sybil didn’t see the damage. Which of course led me to the wonderful line, ‘Don’t mention the wall!’
Sometimes however, it’s the audience who force the cast to think on their feet. “Audience members can get a bit over excited and forget that we are real people as well,” says Rebecca. “Once a woman got up and threw a glass of wine over Basil who, as you can imagine, was quite shocked. I thought, ‘I have to handle this one’ and said, ‘The only person who can berate my husband is me’. Unfortunately the chap playing Basil at the time had to put dye in his hair for the role and it slowly began dripping down his face so he also had to cover that as well.”
One thing that has changed in the 25 years since the show had it’s world premiere in Australia is the ending, Rebecca reveals, “The very first venue in Australia was a restaurant that had a pool area outside and at the end of the night, Basil would walk out the restaurant straight into the pool.”
That certainly won’t be happening on the Scotland Tour assures Dave, revealing that he has, however, invested in a kilt… let’s hope he’s not wearing it when he does Basil’s ‘funny’ walk.
FAULTY TOWERS DINING EXPERIENCE SCOTLAND TOUR VISITS
Edinburgh – The Scotsman Hotel, 9 October-3 November
Aberdeen – Palm Court Hotel, 17-20 October
St Andrew’s – Vic’s Cafe, 22-23 October
Broughty Ferry – Forgan’s, 24-27 October
Glasgow – Arta, 6-17 November
Banff – Fife Lodge Hotel, 9 November
Tickets for all venues are available from https://www.interactivetheatre.com.au/scotland-tour/
This feature was commissioned by Interactive Theatre International
