Guy Fawkes – The Musical

A Gothic Romance

Guy Fawkes the Musical is not just a tale of the famous gunpower treason plot that dominates British history, it is a story about magic told through the eyes of a Victorian bestselling novelist, William Harrison Ainsworth. When Ainsworth decided to put pen to paper in 1840, approaching the already venerable story of the men who conspired to blow up parliament, he decided to not write an accurate historical portrayal of events. Instead his book became a canvas for his creativity and imagination, spinning the truth into an embellished gothic romance full of sorcery, magicians, doomed love and adventure – exactly what his eager readers were looking for at the time.

Our tale shows that each generation can find something different in the Fawkes story, whether it sits as one of the most important moments in British history, or resides simply as a symbol of an annual celebration. At the heart of this story we explore how religious tolerance and understanding are as current today as they were in both Ainsworth’s time and at the time of Fawkes’s failed insurrection; Events that ‘must not be forgot’.

As an aging William Ainsworth is taken back to his glory days after laying his eyes on a hand-made effigy of Guy Fawkes, his story comes to life in front of him, as we Remember, Remember the 5th November!