Horrible Histories: Barmy Britain — Part Three! Garrick Theatre, WC2

reviewed for The Times, 31 July 2015

Neal Foster and Anthony Spargo in Horrible Histories: Barmy Britain – Part 3 (Photo credit: Jane Hobson)

My brother and I were both into history as children. He wanted to be an archaeologist when he grew up, so he could dig about in the mud all day; I wanted to be an Erasmian scholar so that I could read the Greek gospels. If your children are of the first sort, they’ll be enthralled by this all-singing, all-dancing historical sketch show, though parents and purists will find less to enjoy.

More than 20 years after Terry Deary first published Terrible Tudors, Horrible Histories is a franchise with more than 60 books, four TV series, magazines, board games, fancy dress and, yes, stage shows — this offering is the third they’ve managed to squeeze out of Deary’s Barmy Britain book. As a cult, it certainly enthuses children about history, though its dominance has perhaps suffocated other less scatological approaches.

In Barmy Britain — Part Three !, Neal Foster and Anthony Spargo keep us chortling. The hour-long running time means we’re in for a particularly swift trot through British (or rather English) history. This makes for a somewhat conservative history, with a predictable selection of highlights: Magna Carta, Roundheads v Cavaliers, Nelson and Wellington. Yet there’s little sense of historical teleology, let alone a stab at “British values” — the only constant in British history seems to have been the presence of poo. Our narrators like to remind us that most of historical Britain “would look like a foreign country to us”, and as they hop from sketch to sketch they don’t offer much explanation as to how we got here.

Horrible, it is. We watch a primitive human eat his way through the stomach contents of a bear; later, we’re shown the insides of a cholera-infested baby’s nappy. The children sing along to Matthew Scott’s zippy songs with glee, especially the fabulous Puritan Rag. Anti-Puritanism infuses every moment: Charles II emerges to rap his disdain for people who don’t know how to have fun. Perhaps the joke’s on me.