Author Terry Deary has provided us with an iconic book series, Horrible Histories, which was adapted into an iconic tv show and now it’s been turned into an iconic theatre production.
Creator of the show, Neal Foster of Birmingham Stage Company, has been running the production for around 20 years.
“Obviously, you know, all these shows take weeks to write and rehearse and costume and sound effects. So you can’t change it for every city you go to, but we do still make it personal to the city we’re in and that always works very well.
So yes, I’ll be in Edinburgh this weekend and I’ll be doing my best Scottish accent to get the audience to hurl abuse at me. So yeah, probably in Yorkshire, we’re already doing Yorkshire accents in it, but we’ll probably do a few more Yorkshire accents just to have fun. I mean, that’s what theatre is about anyway. It’s about having fun.”
Neal, the director also takes part in the show and sings with the live band amongst others the Charles II song: King of Bling, Dick Turpin: The Highwayman, and the Viking song.
He talked in depth about Ritchie Webb, the musical director and his role in the production and how they like to play jokes on him.
“I think the running gag all the way through is that Richie is trying to play the Monarch song and we keep stopping him. So that’s probably our favourite song that we all sing together because Richie comes and joins in with it.”
” Birmingham Stage Company were very well-known for our work with Roald Dahl, Michael Morpurgo, Philip Pullman. So when we approached Horrible Histories, they knew our work from that. What’s unusual in this show is that those two worlds have come together. The TV people and the stage people have come together. But it is being led by the stage because we know the issues that need to be resolved to put something that was originally created on TV, on the stage. It’s not easy, but we’ve done that well.”
According to York Barbican ‘When William Shakespeare is asked to create the greatest show on earth, he’s no idea how much trouble he’ll get from monstrous monarchs like King Henry VIII, Queen Elizabeth I and Queen Victoria! Things hot up when Death appears – and now Boudica and Cleopatra want to take over! Can things get any worse? Of course they can!’
Horrible Histories the concert is coming to the York Barbican for two days only on the 6th and 7th April, so book your tickets via the York Barbican site.
When reflecting on the show and the legacy of it, Neal says, “When something’s gone on that long, you can’t believe how successful it’s been. All the different people we’ve worked with, all the different places we’ve been…Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Dubai, Oman. To have done all that because of this one amazing series of books written by Terry is a great thing. It’s been a huge part of my life and I don’t know what I would have done without it. And we all feel very lucky that we got to work with Horrible Histories.”
