York playwright David Reed has written a new comic play about Guy Fawkes in time for Bonfire Night

No wonder then, when he returned to England, his expertise was sought out by the group of men who were starting to plan an ingenious way of getting rid of the entire Parliament, and most of the nobles, plus many of the royal family. They were going to ignite a huge store of gunpowder, strategically placed underneath the building where the great, the good, and many of the not-so-good were going to be sitting.

Like so many of us, Reed, 40, had a lot of fun on Guy Fawkes’ Night on the street of his home city. He clearly remembers that one of the yearly challenges for him and his mates at Bootham School was to find (by fair means or foul), a blazer worn by a pupil at rival St. Peter’s school, with which to dress their own guy. And, with luck, a school cap, as well. What did his dad (who was Bootham’s Head of Biology) think about this annual prank and his son’s involvement? “You know, I don’t ever think that I asked him”, he says with a little smile, and adds: “but now, we live right next door to each other, and perhaps I’ll pop round someday, and drop the question.”

Now Reed has turned his fascination with Fawkes into a play, which is directed by Gemma Fairlie. But this is no serious drama. All who know the work of Reed and his fellow Dreadfuls will be hoping for a laugh or three. And they’ll get it in Guy Fawkes – an Explosive New Comedy, which premieres at the York Theatre Royal on October 28.

Most of Reed’s output has a humorous edge, but that doesn’t mean that he avoids doing his research. Indeed, for Fawkes, he’s dug deeply and for many months, into what we know about the man, and his ultimate fate – which was to be hung, drawn and quartered in public after what was nothing more than a forgone conclusion “show trail”.

“The fascinating thing is that, centuries on, we still celebrate a man who was part of an abject failure. He fell flat on his face. What he did wasn’t a great triumph for democracy, it was the biggest political flop ever. All the conspirators were discovered, all suffered the consequences. And the fact that he is remembered for his complete lack of any success at all is, to me, deeply comic. The entire enterprise was doomed from the moment that the expert – Fawkes – met his fellow conspirators in the now long-gone upstairs room in the pub in the Strand. They really could not have bodged it all up more completely if they’d tried. It is essentially a tragic farce. Hysterically funny if it were not so appalling. Then you get the other question – were Guy and his mates heroes – or villains? It was always planned to go without a hitch – but history tells us that things rarely turn out that way.

“The other thing that amuses me today is that so many people turn out on November 5 to have a lot of fun – and that so many of them won’t have the slightest clue as to why they are celebrating. For whatever reason, we cannot let him rest in peace. Looking back, when I was a youngster, you couldn’t go round a corner without some kids propping up their interpretation of a guy, and asking for a few pence. Where’s all that gone – a tradition that is all but vanished, I fear.”

Reed grew up with a lot of comedy in the family home. “Dad was, and is, a great fan,” he explains, “and we had a lot of videos with some of the classic performers. He recorded them from the television – on VHS. They were all labelled. If the label was in pencil, they could be enjoyed for a while, and then recorded over. If it was written with a Sharpie, then it was in the permanent collection. End of. In that latter category there was, The Young Ones, Blackadder, the Python films. The first people I saw live? I remember that so well, it was Punt and Dennis, at the Barbican and I must have been 13. I don’t think that I’ve ever laughed so much in all my life. Hysterically funny. But, you know what, it never for one moment occurred to me that I too could make a reasonable living out of being on a stage, or writing comedy.”

His first professional gig, in fact, was in a band called The Soots (“I think we named ourselves after one of Frank Zappa’s earlier outfits”) and in The de Grey Rooms, right next door to the Theatre Royal. Then he went to Edinburgh at Festival time, happened to meet the right people in the right places, and has never looked back.

“A whole lot of happy-stances”, he admits, adding: “I have never ever had what you could remotely call a ‘game plan’”

Reed doesn’t believe in philosophising about humour, and why it works (or doesn’t) but he does have some thoughts on why and how we laugh.

“It seems to me”, he says, “that real-life situations are often a lot funnier than just telling jokes. And extreme levity can also sometimes be followed by tragedy – which, bizarrely, makes it all the more funny. People laugh right after the most terrible things have happened. Maybe we laugh as self-medication? It’s complex.

“We still don’t know with any accuracy if Fawkes fell off the scaffold or out of a cart, when he was trying to make a getaway. Did people laugh at that? It was terrible black ‘humour’ if they did. Tragedy and comedy go hand in hand – and some of the greatest comics have also had sadness and demons in their backgrounds. I’m thinking of Robin Williams as a prime example”.

He and Danielle met when they were in the same rock band. They do give each other “special opinions” but actually kicking lines at each other would, he laughs “interfere terribly with our child-care plans.” Their daughter Lillian is about to start school – does she show any signs of an entertainment gene?

“She spontaneously did something the other day, at her Grandad’s house, with one of those aluminium toilet-roll holders. It may well be there. If she has as much fun as her parents have had so far, bless her, then she’s going to enjoy herself a lot!”

Guy Fawkes: An explosive new comedy. Theatre Royal, York. October 28 – November 12. Box office on 01904 623568