How to Make a Musical | 5 mins with Dylan Townley & Leo Munby
16 Jun 2025
How To Win Against History tells the story of Henry Paget in the most aggressively obvious art form known to man - the West End musical - just as Henry would have wanted.
But how do you make a musical? We found the two best people to ask: Musical Supervisor & Co-orchestrator Leo Munby and Musical Director & Co-orchestrator Dylan Townley...
How did you each get involved in How To Win Against History?
LM: I’d worked with Seiriol [Davies, Book, Music & Lyrics] a couple of times before, and leapt at the chance to be involved in vamping up this gloriously eccentric show.
DT: I’d worked on the first version of the show with Seiriol and Matthew [Blake, Creative Associate]. It’s been a joy to scale up the show with amazing people like Leo, who bring fresh eyes and ears to it.
What are the jobs of Musical Supervisor, Music Director and Co-Orchestrator?
LM: As Musical Supervisor, I head up the music department, liaise with the sound team, and make sure the show sounds fab. As Co-Orchestrator with Dylan, our job is to decide what the band actually plays – adding colour, texture, and genre to the songs. Basically, we make sure the music feels as classy, chaotic, or camp as it needs to in any given moment.
DT: As Music Director, I lead the band through the show, play keyboard, and look after the music day-to-day during the show’s run. As part of our job as Co-Orchestrators, we also worked with the brilliant Lucy Baker-Swinburn to program the keyboard with a variety of epic and sparkly textures. Overall the sound should deliver the full experience of a glittering night out at a musical.
Tell us about putting together the music for a musical. What creative choices did you make and why?
LM: Dylan and I split the songs between us and spent a few months drafting orchestrations, passing ideas back and forth. One of the big joys (and challenges!) was honouring Seiriol’s wild gear-changes of genre – from operetta to disco to vaudeville and back again – while keeping the orchestrations fun to play for our five-piece band. We wanted the music to feel like part of the storytelling, able to shift tone on a dime and never quite let you settle. It’s a very silly show, but there’s real emotional truth under it – and the music has to do both.
DT: One of our first big choices was which instruments to have in the band. The first version of the show had just three actors and a piano. Now that we have a fantastic five-piece band who each play multiple instruments and sing, we can do so much more to open up the show’s treasure-chest of genres in all its bonkers glory. It's allowed us to make the big moments bigger, the quiet moments more poignant, and to support the show’s fabulous humour and fiery heart. We also shaped the music around new script edits, and a couple of brand new songs from Seiriol that we developed with Francesca Moody and Bristol Old Vic [Co-Producers] and Lisa [Spirling, Director].
What are you most excited about for the show opening?
LM: Hearing it all come to life in this gorgeous theatre – it’s going to be a proper musical feast!
DT: Absolutely. Bon appetit!
