Seiriol Davies
SEIRIOL DAVIES | Book, Music, & Lyrics | Performer
Seiriol Davies [pronounced SAY-re-OLL] is an award-winning writer, composer, songwriter and performer from ruralest Wales. They make fierce, camp musicals that attack knotty political questions in a cloud of glitter. In 2022, they were selected as one of The Stage newspaper’s 25 figures to shake up the theatre landscape in the next 25 years.
Their first musical, the genderpunk Edwardian chamber comedy How to Win Against History premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2016 and became the best-reviewed show of that Festival, hailed by the Telegraph as ‘a work of genius’, the Guardian as ‘one-of-a-kind’ and Time Out as ‘visionary’. It then toured widely and had an extended sellout run at London’s Young Vic. For their lead performance as Henry, Seiriol was nominated for a UK Theatre Award for best performance in a musical. Their follow-up, Milky Peaks, opened at Theatr Clwyd and toured Wales in Spring 2022, becoming a cult hit and lauded as an important piece of contemporary Welsh writing, seeing Seiriol described by Wales Arts Review as “the 21st Century’s post-modern Ivor Novello.”
Betty: A Sort of Musical about Betty Boothroyd, the legendary high-kicking former speaker of the House of Commons, co-written with Maxine Peake (and starring Seiriol & Maxine) opened at the Royal Exchange Manchester Christmas 2022. They are currently developing several other musicals, including queer medieval epic Glyndŵr for National Theatre Wales and Sherman Theatre; a visceral adaptation of the Welsh myth Branwen, co-written with Hanna Jarman and Elgan Rhys, for Cwmni Frân Wen and Wales Millennium Centre; and a queer wrestling musical (with real wrestling!).
Other past work includes The Messenger, written and performed by Seiriol at Sherman Theatre; The Greatest Wealth at The Old Vic; Effigies of Wickedness: Songs Banned by the Nazis with Gate Theatre and English National Opera; Mission Control, a large-scale immersive adventure at the Principality Stadium Cardiff, with National Theatre Wales and Hijinx, in which they also performed.
