Gunpowder Plot Musical 'Remember, Remember!' Earns Rave at Edinburgh Fringe
A camp, queer revisionist musical about the Gunpowder Plot has drawn enthusiastic early notice at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, with WhatsOnStage suggesting the creative team behind it "might have a hit musical on their hands."
Remember, Remember! — a new show by WIT? Theatre Company — opened at the Pleasance on 5 August and runs daily at 17:15 through 30 August. It retells the 1605 Gunpowder Plot in what WhatsOnStage describes as an "explicitly inaccurate" fashion, leaning into pop-culture mashups and musical theatre in-jokes rather than historical fidelity (WhatsOnStage).
The cast multi-roles through the plot's cast of conspirators and court figures. King James I is portrayed as a queer monarch, and one gag places Mary, Queen of Scots' death on "Mean Girls Day" — October 3rd, a reference to the 2004 film. References range from Stephen Sondheim's Company to The Hunchback of Notre Dame, with shout-outs to the television personalities Kim Woodburn and Jane McDonald (WhatsOnStage).
At the centre of the show is Robert Catesby, the actual mastermind of the Gunpowder Plot, whose tragicomic obsession with historical immortality is undercut by the fact that Guy Fawkes — the man Catesby recruited — is the name everyone remembers. Stephen Fry supplies the narrator's voice.
The show arrived at the Fringe with momentum. It won the Charlie Hartill Fund 2026, a Pleasance-backed award that supports emerging companies with funding and mentoring to bring work to Edinburgh. It had previously picked up the Glitch Award at the Lambeth Fringe in 2025. WhatsOnStage included it in a July preview list of recommended new musicals at this year's festival (WhatsOnStage).
The Pleasance has form with Fringe musicals that go further. One Man Musical, a previous hit at the same venue, made the transfer — the move from a Fringe run into a commercial London engagement. Whether Remember, Remember! follows that path depends on audience word-of-mouth across August and any producer interest that follows.
WhatsOnStage's review is not unqualified. Its main criticism: the show lacks a proper ending. The review notes that the production "fizzles out when it should peak," and suggests it needs roughly 20 additional minutes to craft a stronger conclusion (WhatsOnStage).
The official Edinburgh Fringe listing bills the show as a "ridiculously camp new musical" (edfringe.com). For a Fringe audience that numbers in the hundreds of thousands across August, a Gunpowder Plot musical that name-checks Kim Woodburn is the kind of programming the festival exists to surface — odd, specific, and impossible to predict.
Tickets are available through the Edinburgh Fringe box office at edfringe.com.
