Actor Barry Aird on his new role as Guy Fawkes.

Backstage at the Royal Shakespeare Company things are getting rather fired up.

To mark the 400th anniversary of Guy Fawkes and co’s failed attempt to blow up the Houses of Parliament, the RSC will be performing a range of plays – Shakespearean and otherwise - with political intrigue at their core.

In Speaking Like Magpies, a brand new, non-Shakespeare play about the gunpowder plot, Barry Aird, whose curriculum vitae lists Hamlet, Othello and Henry VIII among his previous credits, plays Fawkes himself.

We spoke to him about his shift from Shakespeare and his new role as the most hated man of the seventeenth century.

Speaking Like Magpies opens on 21 September. What are you most looking forward to?
It’s a very dramatic and theatrical play and I’m hoping it’s perceived that way by the audiences. Also, if everyone in the audience gives a penny for the Guy, I’m hoping to clean up money-wise!

Guy Fawkes is a household name but few of us know about the man himself. Who was he?
He was born in York to a catholic family in a protestant land and was baptised in a church which you can still visit, although few do because York Cathedral is the crowd-puller. The religious divide in the country at that time made for a tense upbringing for Guy, and he left the country as a mercenary. He was a shadowy figure who had many, many aliases. Ultimately, of course, he was a demolitions expert.

How did you approach the role character-wise, given that we know so little of him?
I think that to play a character well you have to do so as if you love them and that everything they do is right, whether or not you believe in it yourself. Guy was a strongly religious character who was prepared to kill for his beliefs; I have to enter a frame of mind in which I am incredibly certain that the gunpowder plot was just.

What was it about the gunpowder plot which has lasted in our imaginations?
I think first and foremost catholic leaders made sure it wasn’t forgotten and used it as anti-protestant propaganda until it stuck. Although there were others involved in the plot, one man – Guy Fawkes – was used as the single figure against whom to vent hatred.

Are there any modern parallels with terrorism today?
Of course. The events of 7 July are very much in people’s minds, and after it happened things in the script just jumped out at us. We don’t want to push it too much though. And that aside, the gunpowder plot wasn’t really terrorism in the sense of today’s meaning. The act was aimed at sabotaging the King and his family.

How does the staging of Speaking Like Magpies differ from the previous Shakespeare work you’ve done?
Shakespeare’s plays are performed to be heard as much as they are to be seen. A Shakespearean actor can find himself starting a sentence and still be reeling it off ten minutes later, so you have to be very aware of your breathing. Modern plays, like Speaking Like Magpies, tend to be more visual. And although it’s incredibly poetic, it’s also very sparse.

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