“How To Win Against History” at Bristol Old Vic - review

Nearly 10 years after its premiere, Seiriol Davies’ musical about the life of the fifth Marquess of Anglesey, Henry Cyril Paget, “How To Win Against History”, has gone from sleeper Edinburgh Festival Fringe hit to fully-fledged, main-stage musical.

Paget brought shame and bankruptcy on to his family by blowing his extraordinary inheritance putting on extravagant productions that nobody wanted to see, complete with butterfly dances, lilac-dyed poodles and ruby-encrusted slippers.

The original cast of Davies, Matthew Blake as Alexader Keith and Dylan Townley as the musical maestro reunite to revive this diamanté-studded hit. Polished and gleaming anew it is now at the Bristol Old Vic theatre. It’s camp, it’s unique, and it’s unbelievably fun. With sharp melodies, winning performances, and a richer exploration of what it means to live defiantly on your own terms, it is a cavalcade of camp joy.

Little is known about the Marquess because, after he died aged 29, his family burned nearly all record of him. His tragedy is that no one was particularly interested in him; his plays were poorly attended, and yet he insisted on their wasteful fabulousness.

He built a theatre in his family’s crypt, staged lavish adaptations of plays, and starred in them himself, draped in sparkling frocks. The audiences stayed away. The money vanished like smoke. After his death, his family disowned him, reducing his life to ashes - literally burning all traces of him.

There is, however, one surviving portrait: a bearded man in a tiara and a debutante gown, staring back at the world with pride, unashamed and unbothered. The world called him mad, but in that image, at least, he seems not to care.

Lisa Spirling’s direction keeps the enthusiasm at a permanent high, feeling highly buffed yet still able to lean into the joy-fuelled romp with witty lyricism; claiming back a flamboyant character that history tried to erase. It felt like a tonic, a reclamation of a figure who had been laughed at and dismissed,.

What follows over the next 90 minutes is a tragi-comic musical about the Empire, the itchiness of tweed and what happens when, despite having been born into wealth and privilege, the world just is not built for you. Davies manages to create more than just that though, with an unexpected poignancy running beneath the whole play, we meet a man, who, like most of us, is simply trying to work out who he is.

Davies’ production proceeds from an admiration of his single-mindedness, portraying him as a kind of childish elf, ignorant of convention and propriety, the audacity to stand tall, own your truth, and live boldly, even when the world refuses to look you in the eye. It doesn’t shy away from Paget’s darker edges - his marriage of convenience to Lilian Florence Maud Chetwynd is portrayed as controlling. Yet Davies shows us the little boy behind the man, lost in a world that would not let him be himself.

He performs alongside their original collaborating co-devisers: Matthew Blake as Paget’s actor companion Alexander Keith, who twists and turns in and out of characters before our eyes and the delightfully assured Dylan Townley as the Maestro, on keyboard, heading up a five-piece band. His finely sketched cameos add yet another layer of charm.

Blake, slipping into other roles such as Paget’s "bisexual hurricane" of a wife, Lilian, his housemaster at Eton and, most chilling of all, a diabolical Daily Mail reporter with effortless precision, each role brimming with humour and surprising emotional depth.

Hayley Grindle’s set is all Edwardian imperial opulence, Robbie Butler’s lighting and Dan Samson’s sound design also helps conjure the right atmosphere and Ryan Dawson Laight’s costumes are as fabulous as one would expect and hope. Riffing on a tradition of British popular performance, from Gilbert and Sullivan to music hall, in some ways it manages to fulfil Paget’s desire to be cherished by audiences.

The show barrels forward with frenetic energy - a reflection of Paget’s whirlwind, 100-mile-an-hour approach to life, from schooldays to betrothal, acting days and divorce, with hardly a pause for breath. On the way poking the Victorian elite and its education system in the eye, before hitting the road as licensed Bohemians in touring productions of everything from panto to Shakespeare.

But when the show finally slows, when it takes a moment to reflect, a deeper heart begins to emerge beneath the sequins and sparkle. It’s a joyous paean to a cross-dressing individualist wrapped in a Victorian tragicomedy of identity and broken dreams.

How To Win Against History is at the Bristol Old Vic until July 12.