How To Win Against History

Seiriol Davies’s giddily preposterous musical is a true Edinburgh Fringe classic, having originated at the festival back in 2016. A larky collision of Gilbert & Sullivan and Monty Python, it tells the story of Henry Paget, the fifth Marquess of Anglesea, a flamboyant Victorian nobleman who frittered away a fortune converting the family chapel into a theatre and staging his own terrible plays there at enormous expense. Alex Swift’s original production did really quite well for itself, but in the hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Paget’s birth How To Win Against History is back in a new upgraded production from incoming Stratford East boss Lisa Spirling. Exactly how different it is to the original is TBC – frankly it would be fine if it was unchanged – but the original cast of Davies, Matthew Blake and Dylan Townley are all returning for the Francesca Moody and Bristol Old Vic-produced revival.