With Coventry primary schools on half-term this week, this show could both entertain and educate your children, for the team behind the Horrible Histories brand know two fundamental truths. First, that the best way to educate children is to entertain them. Second, there is nothing more entertaining for children than entrails, gruesome death, poo, vomit and pee jokes. Hence, their marketing strapline: “It’s history with the nasty bits left in”.

It is history education and entertainment that works. Like many parents with a child or children in primary school, I am sometimes incredulous how much our children know of history. Recently, my eleven-year-old daughter told me about Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat on a bus. “Is that what they are teaching you in school?” I asked. “Nah, I saw it on Horrible Histories” came her reply.

Alas, the stage version failed to match up to the television series in many respects. There is a cast of two, Benedict Martin and Pip Chamberlain. As good as they are, and they are both very good, they are restricted to oversimplified narratives by virtue of their number. Their songs were for two performers only. I recall seeing a very clever and informative sketch sung by four King Georges on TV, which helps children remember which was the fat one, the sad one, the bad one and the mad one. Such sketches cannot be replicated with only two actors. Also, many of the regular features that facilitate narrative flow in the TV series were absent, such as the Grim Reaper of Stupid Deaths and Rattus Rattus. With no extra cast to cover, such some of the costume changes seemed a little stilted as the actors slipped off one coat and slipped on another to pass through time from era to era.

This show focused on Barmy Britain and started off with some of the delicacies of Roman cuisine, such as putrefied mackerel guts. The Saxons and the Vikings came next and gave a lesson of place name entomology, using the time-tested pantomime song card and creating a volume competition between the left and right sides of the auditorium. As an adult this was all very predictable, but the children were raising the roof, singing, laughing and thoroughly enjoying themselves. I’m pretty sure they will remember the Roman origin of Leicester and the Viking origin of Rugby for many years to come.

The Tudors came next with a sketch including the beautifully bearded Queen Elizabeth I. Clearly, not much interesting happened in the seventeenth century as we fast forwarded to the story of Dick Turpin in the eighteenth, and then through to look at hygiene issues in the Victorian era. The killing fields of the Great War were explained with reference to a popular television business themed show, but one that is screened after the 9pm watershed, so the humour was a bit lost on some of the children. This was a curious choice for presenting to children, but nevertheless, it succeeded in getting their minds around the scale of the mass casualties of the Somme.

This was a whirlwind sprint through two thousand years in about an hour and ten minutes. There was no time for the younger children to get bored and the actors did well to keep up the pace and interest. If you do come to see this show you will be educating your child or children through the school holidays without them realising. What can be wrong with that?   ★★★☆☆   Robert Gainer    31^st May 2018