Fair is Foul, and Foul is Fair: the Plot to Blow up Parliament Takes the Fringe

★★★★★

“Treason is treason is treason.”

This much the characters of The Plot know. This much the play’s audience knows. This much all the young schoolchildren of Britain know before they set light to their bonfires. 

The way in which Howlett chooses to reconfigure the worn story, blending fact with fiction and considering the optics of a bleak grey landscape, injects it with new life. Ironically, the plot of writer & director Emma Howlett’s newest venture is its least interesting component. 

The two-hander is delivered masterfully by Sophie Kean and Abby McCann, who, acting as brothers Robert and Tomas Wintour, steer audiences through an examination of the plot to blow up parliament. The opening scene interrupts the brothers in a game of matches, an image instantly reminiscent of another famous Fringe production, which introduced its two protagonists in a similar pose of gameplay and Elizabethan dress. Through the course of the play, the influence of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead only becomes more evident as philosophical interrogations are meted out alongside farce, each scene moving quickly between alternate characters, times, fiction, and reality. 

While Howlett’s writing is undeniably shrewd, it is the caliber of each aspect of the play — Theatregoose’s fourth production — which distinguishes it from other plays premiering at the 2026 festival season. 

The set, designed by Ellie Wintour, consisted of an ashen rock and chains hanging from the ceiling, evocative not of classical theatre, but of fine art. That it felt both opulent and barren, stunningly characterising the Elizabethan styled purgatory, was a feat enough, but the way in which the actors interacted with each of its components, leaving no stone unturned, made the play’s design integral to its telling. Sound design by Sarah Spencer and lighting design by Ed Saunders seamlessly enabled the barren space to temporally transform, making rapid switches between scenes and characters appear to be the only natural course of events. 

The production was matched by impressive dialect work and physical performances by Kean and McCann. Audiences were immersed throughout, making it unthinkable that the play had ever existed merely as words on a page. While Kean was all physical power and gesture, McCann provided constant comedy and voice. Their performance felt fittingly like a continual transference of fire and water, each dousing the other’s match before the room could explode. 

Muna Mir

Photos via Guilia Ferrando