Curious tales of a nasty past
The gruesome bits make history interesting, Horrible Histories’ director Neal Foster says.
The past is a strange and nasty place. But for Neal Foster, that’s what makes it so interesting. Foster is the director of the Horrible Histories stage show, set to tour New Zealand later this year.
Dubbed Barmy Britain,the play covers the history of what we now know as the United Kingdom. But unlike many accounts, Foster’s version leaves the ‘‘nasty’’ bits – the gruesome and bizarre and above all interesting details – in.
For example: it took 11 blows from the executioner’s axe to behead the Countess of Salisbury in 1541. When King Richard I captured Cyprus, he made all the island’s men shave their beards. Richard Roose, a cook for a Tudorera bishop, was boiled alive for poisoning his master’s soup.
The Horrible Histories stage show features just two actors – Foster himself is one of them – and there are no breaks between scenes.
Foster describes it as ‘‘very simple but very effective’’.
The play provides plenty of opportunities for the audience to get involved, and while it’s directed at children, Foster says adults tend to learn just as much.
‘‘Everybody thinks they know history, they know the stories, and what they find out when they come and see our show is that what they thought they knew all turns out to be wrong, and they get the true line of history, which often turns out to be a lot more interesting than what they thought they knew.’’
Foster’s Birmingham Stage Company has been doing Horrible Histories plays for 12 years, covering Terrible Tudors, Vile Victorians, Rotten Romans, Awful Egyptians and more.
The plays are based on a series of books by British author Terry Deary. Deary himself has a background in theatre and has helped write and produce the shows.
Foster says the books’ attitude to their subject matter made them perfect to adapt for stage.
‘‘[Deary] understands very well what makes history interesting and what makes children interested in history.
‘‘They have a very theatrical slant to them, and they transfer to the stage really beautifully, because also they’re very naughty, they’re disgusting, they’re rude, they’re silly, they’re irreverent, they’re dangerous – and all of those things are obviously great things for theatre.’’
But the formula hasn’t changed much from the start – after all, why fix something that is very much not broken?
‘‘One of the scenes which is always one of the best scenes is a Terry Deary scene when Henry VIII meets Anne Boleyn, and that was in the first show we ever did and it’s still one of the best scenes in Barmy Britain,’’ Foster says.
It’s fair to say the plays have been a hit. From its humble beginnings in Darlington, England, the Horrible Histories stage show has been performed in Dubai, Singapore, Sydney, Hong Kong, and London’s West End.
Barmy Britain was created for its West End debut three years ago, and now has the record for the West End’s longest-running children’s show.
Foster loves taking the shows to new countries – New Zealand, in this case – because the audience’s reaction can be totally different.
‘‘I’ve never got remotely bored of doing them, because every audience is a new audience and there’s always something you discover with a scene that the audience brings to it, which is why we like travelling abroad because audiences in different countries enjoy slightly different things, which keeps it very fresh.’’
Wherever the show goes, Foster says the response is ‘‘universally great’’ – with only one exception.
‘‘The only times it isn’t is when you get a school that’s very wellbehaved and very strict, and they’ve been told by their teachers, ‘Do not make a sound when you’re in the theatre.’
‘‘And sometimes you can be wondering if anyone’s out there because some school teacher has misunderstood what theatre’s all about. But once an audience knows it’s allowed to join in and play along, then nothing stops it.’’
Horrible Histories: Barmy Britain kicks off in Hamilton on September 30. It comes to Wellington’s Opera House on October 7 and there are two shows at the Isaac Theatre Royal in Christchurch on October 14. For more info, including the full touring schedule, visit livenation.co.nz.
"Everybody thinks they know history, they know the stories, and what they find out when they come and see our show is that what they thought they knew all turns out to be wrong." Neal Foster