The Weekend Interview: Finding The Comedy In Guy Fawkes With David Reed

Group Editor Andrew Palmer caught up with David Reed the author of an explosive new comedy based on the life of Guy Fawkes.

A few minutes into my interview with the playwright and actor, David Reed, and I’m already laughing, which is a good sign as Reed has written his debut stage play, Guy Fawkes, a comedy about York’s traitorous trigger man, that premieres at York’s Theatre Royal in October.

By which time it seems, we will all need a laugh if the credit crisis continues.

Reed is an interesting man and one who can hold his interviewer’s attention even though we keep digressing. I suspect it is my fault and I could be keeping him in the glass foyer of the Theatre Royal for a bit too long, on one of the hottest days of the year. But his genial persona puts me at ease.

We have been swapping stories about actors corpsing on stage, prompted by my admission I had signed up to his podcast Inside the Comedian.

“I really enjoy producing the podcast Andrew, especially when you find a kindred spirit who gets what I am trying to do. For me Peter Cook and Dudley Moore are the benchmark in how they used to try and make each other corpse.

“When things break and you carry on there is nothing like it,” he says.

Reed, whose career to date is steeped in the comedic world, has turned his sights on fellow York man Guy Fawkes. But why I ask?

“Thinking about it, I do not think we commemorate or celebrate anyone else who is only known for having failed. That is both cruel and very funny. The spark of inspiration that led to the fuse of comedy.”

I am about to say, I see what you did there, when Reed says, “I’m reaching”.

Laughter again and fearing I might go off at tangent I bring the conversation back to the Gunpowder Plot.

“The play is a comedy about a group of people attempting something impossible and it is all going very very wrong for them.

“They try and desperately keep their heads above water, and it just gets worse. So, I came to this with the idea there is something uniquely British and funny as Guy Fawkes – who was, after all, a failure.

“There is something both tragic and hysterical about it that I think us British enjoy. We like a bit of pain mixed with our laughter and I thought this is a story I can tell.”

Reed explains more about the plot and how he has structured the play around a group of pub bores, we all know the type, the sort, according to Reed who meet once a week and talk about how they are going to overthrow the crown or a new government or even kidnap a princess.

“All that kind of stuff where not one of them has a clue how to do any of it. And dropped into this mix of gobshites, to coin a phrase, is an actual battle scarred and dangerous war veteran who does know how to achieve this. It is that chemical explosion of dropping the wrong poison in to this mix that drags all of them into the worst possible place they can get. It has a real tragic heart at the centre of it, but it is a hysterical comedy,” he suggests.

Reed is already whetting my appetite and I can see where he is going with the plot, especially as he admits to being inspired by the likes of Blackadder and Monty Python. He is a huge fan of Terry Gilliam’s contribution to films and thinks Graham Chapman was a force in Monty Python, playing the role so that others (Cleese and Palin) were able to goof around. He has used that influence for Guy Fawkes, “you have an angry and frustrated man at the centre surrounded by wallies.”

If, like me, you think you know how the story develops, think again. Do not be so sure as Reed is tantalising me with tasters of what might be included because, as he confesses, people know what happens.

“Keeping the surprises has been part of the writing puzzle. Everyone knows how the poor man ends up.

“My solution is twofold. One has been to add in an element of potential redemption, for example, there is a romantic touch to it, I introduce a character that did exist historically, and this gives Guy Fawkes a layer and depth. So, the surprise is not what happens to him, it is how you feel about the man when it does!”

All very intriguing and with all Reed’s writing he gives a story we all know, substance. As he says, “you can make people laugh and laugh but then if the curtain just falls, people still go away unsatisfied, in my experience. You have to give them something a bit meaty. And that is what I hope creeps up over the audience during the play.”

I am already looking forward to the October opening. It is ambitious but so was the revolutionary Fawkes, could it be a York thing? Reed went to the Quaker Bootham School a stone’s throw from the theatre, where his dad taught. Guy Fawkes famously went to the “proper posh school” St Peter’s. Reed acknowledges that growing up in York, makes him palpably aware of the man’s presence and being connected to him.

“It is something we get uniquely, that other people do not, even those living in London, where of course the plot began. Fawkes was born on Stonegate, baptised at St Michael Le Belfrey, and lived at the time Margaret Clitherow was arrested, tried, and sentenced to death.”
On 29 March 1586, she was publicly executed, crushed beneath several large weights.

We are surrounded by things that would have had a massive impact on his life.”

Reed has obviously done his research and with the love interest he introduces it means he had to fill in a lot of blanks.

“Of course, the man I am presenting is one partly of historical fact and massively of my own invention, but I can play with the themes of what drove him to such extremes.

“What I am hoping to achieve is not to redeem the man in as much as saying, come on guys he only tried to blow up an entire building full of people. Everyone’s opinion on that, or most people, is unified. It is horrific.

“But it is far too easy to dismiss people as evil or as inhuman who concoct these ideas, rather than facing the scarier thought: they are like us. Don’t you think it’s a terrifying idea that anyone of us could be driven to such extremes having been put under a pressurised situation?”

The conversation draws me to the impression that Reed does not want to hate Guy Fawkes but understand him through an act of invention, a sentiment he concurs with, adding that he thinks it is interesting to try.

There are some parallels to be drawn with life today such as the curse of social media I suggest. Reed agrees: “We are not looking at each other, instead we are looking at where the battle lines are … I am on this side or he is on that side, without any context. Stuff is just thrown out and we do not listen to each other’s point of view, choosing instead, to make a number of assumptions about what a person is thinks or believes.”

Making this point leads Reed to quickly follow up: “In no way is this a diatribe on Guy Fawkes having the right idea, more of an examination of a deeply troubled human being. It would be interesting for us all to look at the darker side of humanity sometime.”

The temperature in the foyer is beginning to get quite intense as the sun pounds down on us and I know that Reed must get away as he is at the theatre to start casting, which has been a “really fun process”.

“This is my first stage play and the first thing I have written in which I am not appearing. Handing my words to other people has been really fascinating and a wonderful experience. We have had so many talented people come in and read; we have actively been looking for people in Britain but specifically from the York talent pool as well.

“We are holding auditions here because it is nice to know that one audition in a hometown rather than travelling to London as that does not seem fair.”

I am at it again, despite the heat, I go off on a tangent telling Reed I am a speechwriter as well as a journalist and I get the comment about how putting words into other people’s mouths can be frustrating if the delivery is wrong.

That is it, we are off sharing stories again. His of course, are far better than mine because he can name drop and colour his anecdotes. Like the time Richard E Grant says the phrase “douche cloth” in a play Reed had written about the French Revolution, it brought the house down everyone fell about.

Things can go wrong in interpretation but it often works. Reed once wrote a two-hander speech for Stanley Tucci and Jim Broadbent for the Baftas. “They both knocked it out of the park I have never had anyone do it so well. it was a privilege. Brilliant in fact.”

Thinking I have gone off-piste, I need not worry. Reed explains that when he writes he has the person’s voice in his head. He often writes ensemble pieces for his comedy sketch troupe the Penny Dreadfuls.

“The character(s), in my head, informs me what they are going to say. Once that mechanism is place you can have them bicker with each other and you just write it down.

“It is a wonderfully weird feeling. But then, of course, handing it to other actors they have not heard that voice in your head and may interpret that very differently.

“Often with a talented actor it is a boon because it elevates the script, and they inhabit it far more than I can do when juggling six voices in my head. They add depth and emotional motivation plus clarity. It is a true collaboration and that is more fun in many ways. More nerve-racking though as the stakes are high.”

History has been one of Reed’s biggest sources of material, he has written 10 radio plays based on historical figures. He enjoys filling in the blanks of a story “a joyous exercise that can be preposterous or fun about their story because it is often told with such earnestness or severity.

“There is a lot of fascinating weird but true stuff and that is my motivation to start a story. I get hooked on one particular corner of history.”

In fact, he has just had play performed on BBC Radio 4 about Septimius Severus, who was Rome’s only African emperor who lived in York between AD208-11.

“I co-wrote it with the actor and author Paterson Joseph. I had not heard of Severus then I discovered more about this man and felt it was an important story for people to hear.”

For now though, I am going to leave this jovial author to go back to the Guy Fawkes read throughs, although he has his own to prepare; he is starring as an actor in Ghosts and the spin off series of Death in Paradise appearing with Kris Marshall and Sally Bretton in Beyond Paradise set in Devon rather than the more exotic Caribbean.

As I get up to leave, I’m already thinking of Guy Fawkes in a different way; this is a person who has been driven to horrendous extremes, presumably from horrendous beginnings.

One thing is for certain, having been chatting with David Reed for 45 minutes, he certainly knows how to make someone laugh.