In a career spanning two and half decades, performing across film, television and stage, it’s perhaps no surprise that Luke Alleva is going to have a few career highlights.
He’s what’s known as a ‘multi-hyphenate’ – he can sing, act, and improvise – and his talents have seen him perform in West End productions through to his own solo show at Melbourne’s Hamer Hall.
However it was his dancing skills that landed him his first big break. When Alleva was only 18 years old, he was cast as one of the lead dancers in Baz Luhrmann’s lavish feature film Moulin Rouge. “Getting the experience with Baz Luhrmann, and the absolute renowned performers that were part of that, was such a highlight,” he recalls.
Explore Melbourne’s latest arts and stage events, exhibitions, productions and performances here.
Hanging out with Brian May was another. The lead guitarist of Queen might be known as Sir Brian May to the rest of us these days, but when Alleva was in London performing in We Will Rock You – the musical theatre production inspired by the band’s extensive back catalogue of classic rock songs – May was simply a co-performer.
“Brian May and Roger Taylor were special guests in a lot of performances, and performing on-stage with them was just goosebumps galore,” he says, and they’d jam off-stage as well. “It would just be a regular Wednesday and Brian May would just come and have a guitar jam with us, side stage. To sing with him and talk with him was another pinch-me moment,” says Alleva.
View this post on Instagram
Closer to home, playing Eddie Ryan in Funny Girl, working with “cream of the crop” performers Nancye Hayes and Caroline O’Connor, both legends of Australia’s theatre world, also ranks up there for Alleva, as does his recent performance at Hamer Hall.
Earlier in March, he ticked off a bucket-list ambition when his show The Dancin’ Man, played there as part of Arts Centre Melbourne’s Morning Melody series. “It was an absolute honour to perform my one man show, with my three-piece band, in what for me has always been the absolute best theatre in Australia,” he says.
Working in prestigious venues with such accomplished creatives, Alleva is now drawing on those experiences as he inhabits one of the world’s most famous comedy characters – Manuel, the hapless waiter from Fawlty Towers, in Interactive Theatre International’s Faulty Towers The Dining Experience.
Fawlty Towers, the iconic BBC television series, first screened back in the 1970s. Set in a seaside hotel and run by the pompous Basil and his wife Sybil, with waiter Manuel looking after the dining guests, it is widely considered to be the best British sitcom of all time.
Even though only a dozen half-hour episodes were ever made, the show has cemented its place in pop culture history. Inspired by these iconic characters and the farcical situations their dysfunctional interactions inevitably degenerate into, Faulty Towers The Dining Experience is a highly improvised, interactive and fully-immersive live comedy show, which is performing as part of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival at the Stamford Plaza.
First performed in Brisbane back in 1997, the show has gone on to become a hit around Australia and the UK, where it has been consistently touring for the past 25 years. Alleva joined the cast a couple of years ago and says “Manuel is so much fun to play.”
“The audiences love him, he’s the fan favourite,” says Alleva. In the TV show, Manuel is Spanish, with broken English and a bumbling demeanour that causes no end of tension with the uptight Basil, who was played by John Cleese.
Andrew Sachs, the actor who played Manuel originally, “was British-Italian and when you look at the episodes, he didn’t have the best Spanish accent at all. Which also made it quite funny,” explains Alleva, who is Italian himself.
“You don’t want to go away from the character, but at the same time, you don’t want to mimic the character either,” he says of how he’s approached taking on such a famous role as an actor, looking for the essence and physicality to then “play it in your way”.
Like Faulty Towers The Dining Experience overall, Alleva says they take the “suggestion” of the TV episodes, and for fans of the TV series, “there’s lots of connections” back to the original, but the immersive show they create doesn’t lift directly from those scripts.
Instead, they have their own narrative goal and the structure “does allow for a lot of roleplay and a lot of improvisation with the audience, as well as with each other,” says of the comedy of errors they create each night, as they literally serve food – and sometimes even hurl a dinner roll across the room – as part of it.
View this post on Instagram
“The audience will feel like they are actually in that hotel having their dinner, and because it is so immersive they feel like they’re actually part of that 70s era,” he says. Alleva feels that trip back in time allows the audience to forget about how serious and stressful modern daily life can be and just “have a good, good, good laugh”.
“That’s what it’s about, to just release from the normal world and feel like you are somewhat a part of the show, and have a good laugh for a good two hours or so,” he says, adding you don’t need to have seen the TV series to enjoy the live show.
“We’re getting people who are eight and 10 years old, we’re getting teenagers,” he says of the way Dining Experience is introducing the world of the Fawltys to new generations, while reminding older generations of favourite moments. “People will say ‘I watched all the episodes and I forgot about that one. You know what, I’m gonna go back and watch it’”.
Alleva says it’s the funniness of the show that ultimately unites their audiences. “Audiences absolutely lose it, so come for the comedy, enjoy a feed and have fun with everyone there because it’s immersive, everyone is together in this.”
Faulty Towers The Dining Experience is being performed at Stamford Plaza Melbourne from April 11 to 16, as part of Melbourne International Comedy Festival.
This article was made in partnership with Interactive Theatre International.
