(5 / 5)

History is one of those parts of being a Culture Vulture I love. I wouldn’t say I’m a nerd but I do love me a bit of history. And as a Brit, we all know about holding hot dogs around a bonfire in a field and looking up at fireworks at the sky while we freeze our butts of every November.

But this is a production to tell us about what we didn’t know about the Gunpowder Plot. Remember, Remember! is a hilarious, untrue and re-imagined retelling of Guy Fawkes and the plot to blow up Parliament. It is everything we know and much more we don’t with the change of the story from conception to what really happened; to the change of the main man we know responsible today from someone we’ve never heard of; a camp love affair with the King and endless comedy in the farcical approach to the tale.

This is a slightly hard review to write because it definitely is a show you need to just experience. This isn’t a cop out but that I genuinely don’t think I could do it justice. It is so unbelievably funny, smart, fast paced, that you don’t have a single minute to breathe through laughter. The performers all play a multitudes of characters and they are all hammed up, and/or a stereotype of a figure; for example, Guy is a bit of a too-cool-for-school guy that everyone fancies and is just effortless. The way they do this for the characters is so well done and the element of over exaggeration fits well with the overall approach to the production.

Because they aren’t sticking to the “truth”, the embellishments aim to create comedy and shock you. They take a piece from the history and run with it; King James’s well known love of men is exaggerated, with him as a very camp, almost slimy character, with the tiniest of crowns and pink bloomers. Every element, from performance to costume, set and narrative is so well thought out and just absolutely stuffed to the brim with comical moments.

The performers are just fantastic – while the characters are well formed, there’s these moments of them as a group giving a break for narrative support and in this, they themselves have their own story-line – two have a love hate relationship, flipping each other off, and taking the mick and the lines blur between the historic and the modern. It only makes it more funny and we love each of these performers individually and in how brilliantly they work together.

Remember, Remember! is absolute hilarity from start to finish. Don’t expect to come out having learnt anything historically factual but do expect to come out with your cheeks and sides hurting from laughter and in awe of the absolute absurdity that has ensued.