How to Win Against History

Seiriol Davies’ sell-out show from Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2016 was a huge hit with audiences and critics alike; now the musical extravaganza will be returning to the Fringe and touring the UK – starting at Pontio, Bangor, near Anglesey, home to both Seiriol and the central character – before a run at the Young Vic. Seiriol stars as Henry Cyril Paget, the flamboyant cross-dressing 5th Marquis of Anglesey who gained notoriety for squandering his family’s godlike wealth on diamond-studded plays, star vehicles for himself which nobody came to.

The ‘Dancing Marquis’ inherited his title in 1898 at the age of twenty-one, and was declared bankrupt just six years later, after burning through his vast fortune, spending it on bejewelled dresses, poodles dyed lilac, a fleet of cars modified to give out rose-scented exhaust fumes, and touring Germany with an enigmatic show called The Famous Electric Butterfly Dance. When he died a year later, his family burnt every record of his life they could find, and carried on as though he’d never been. How to Win Against History is an outrageous musical about being just too weird for the world, but desperately not wanting it to forget you.

Creatives

Writer and composer Seiriol Davies

Director Alex Swift

Musical Director Dylan Townley

Set and Costume Designer Verity Quinn

Lighting Designer Dan Saggers

Dramaturg Eve Leigh