The idea of the comedy ‘dining experience’ is done most famously at the Fringe by the Fawlty Towers Dining Experience, the concept being that a tribute act to a famous sitcom do a variety act with nods to the TV show itself while you are served lunch. For two hours. This show attempts to do the same thing with another comedy property, Catholic-com Father Ted - appropriate since attending it felt slightly like an act of penance.
Don’t get me wrong: I love Father Ted. It’s one of my favourite sitcoms of all time. So to see that bittersweet, creative, ever so scabrous and never less than viciously intelligent show hacked down to a bunch of commercially repackaged catchphrases and characters, reconstituted and served alongside a plate of lukewarm, bland chicken in the function room of a sterile corporate hotel was like having one’s beloved memories stamped to death by a steel logo.
The time is filled with a bunch of songs, skits, and audience participation sections, none of which were more than passably amusing. Mrs Doyle sings My Heart Will Go On, one of the audience members is referred to as a stripping nun, and Can’t Touch This is repurposed, badly, for Catholic audiences. No, Father Ted was never meant to be politically correct, but I still cringed when Ted asked for other religious groups in the audience; Jokes about the Muslim religious head being a ‘Shiite-head’ were made with all the confidence of performers assuming they’ll basically always be playing to white over-50s who will like fart jokes and endless terrible puns.
There’s some decent one-on-one with guests, but not much. As a variety act, there doesn’t seem to be much point to it; at least Fawlty Towers had the excuse that Fawlty is actually trying to run a restaurant, but here the comedy is completely out of context. I doubt there are many fans of the show who will like the bastardisation of a show that has so much sadness at its heart and for anybody else, well, what will any of it mean? The cardinal sin behind this show is avarice, for which the makers should feel some good old Catholic guilt.
