Music: Ricky Allan
Book and Lyrics: Ricky Allan and Kieran Lynn
Director: Hannah Chissick
When Ricky Allan and Kieran Lynn premiered their 50-minute Treason The Musical in a live streamed concert version in March 2021, it was already clear that their nascent production was something a bit special while the savvy release of a selection of songs built a fan base. Allan and Lynn have done a tremendous job in expanding those 11 numbers into a 30-song, two-act story for its West End debut on the Theatre Royal Drury Lane stage as part of a run of summer concerts where it easily upstages the rest of the series.
Henry Percy and his wife Martha are optimistic that the accession of King James I will bring tolerance for Catholics and allow them to worship openly once again. But when the monarch breaks his promise to fund a war with Spain, Percy is drawn to the dark Robert Catesby who has a dastardly plan to set the world on fire with a few barrels of gunpowder, and Percy must choose between his wife and his faith.
Treason The Musical now divides very neatly into two acts; the first throws Percy into the arms of the conspirators who end Act One by agreeing to undertake drastic action in The Plot while Act Two takes the story to the familiar conclusion. All of this is managed by a contemporary narrator role using grime-poetry created by Debris Stevenson to set the scene as well as comment on the broad themes and historic resonances. Although there are allusions to Hamilton and even Martin Crimp’s Cyrano de Bergerac, these strengthened passages work well, drawing useful modern parallels.
But along the way Allan and Lynn have fleshed out the characters, hanging their story from the Percy’s marriage and speculating on the division between them. It gives Martha a more central role in proceedings, able to elucidate the debate between forceful or peaceful means that underscores virtually every political movement. It also adds emotional heft as the songs explore the role of women who are powerless to stop their husbands but are left to deal with the aftermath of their actions.
Allan and Lynn are sympathetic to the plotters, building their motivation around faith and betrayal that affects the bond between monarch and subject as well as between husband and wife. This new iteration of the show has far more context about early-seventeenth-century England, the realm James inherited and the chain of events that pushed Catesby and his friends past the point of no return. Growing the comic role of King James, played with glorious relish by Daniel Boys, in order to do that is an excellent decision with all his three songs receiving a rapturous response.
There is now greater conflict in the character of Thomas Percy; able to chart the growing distance with his wife and the certainty that God is placing him on the right path. The suggestion that Percy is easily led by Catesby (Simon-Anthony Rhoden) perhaps needs a stronger emphasis as the current Thomas seems very much his own man. Perhaps moving the song The Cold, Hard, Ground – that foregrounds Catesby’s fanaticism and determination to be reunited with his own dead wife which is a little stranded where it is – to Act One could create sufficient ambiguity to cast doubt on his influence over Thomas.
Bradley Jaden, who has been with the project since the streamed concert, is an excellent Thomas, driven by what he believes is a higher calling and blind to his wife’s appeals. The music doesn’t allow Jaden to give his voice full range until Act Two but his soulful and layered Thomas is full of struggle. As his wife, Carrie Hope Fletcher’s Martha has a more sorrowful role to play, foreseeing dangers she cannot prevent but still finding agency in the role as an overruled wife as well as spokesperson for history’s overlooked women.
The show never enacts the over familiar events of the 5 November itself and Guido Fawkes is a minor character with no lines, a mercenary for hire on the outside the psychological focus on this tight band of plotters. Les Dennis is very enjoyable, but the inclusion of Robert Cecil as a second comedy character and a whole song, Paperwork, is superfluous, especially as the show has had to sacrifice the interesting aftermath material that followed Thomas to the siege of Holbeche House where he contemplated his final moments – if Treason The Musical is arguing that life for the women continued beyond 5 November, then it did for these men as well and that’s the part audiences know far less about.
Director Hannah Chissick also has a long association with the project, and successfully keeps the concert focused on character and music with only minor distractions from Taylor Walker’s choreography. Mixing folk with musical theatre and grime, it is really exciting to see how far Treason The Musical has come in just over a year. Allan and Lynn have delivered an exciting new piece of theatre and if they keep plotting away it could be dynamite.
Reviewed on 23 August 2022
The Reviews Hub Score
Dynamite
