Having already brought the Romans, Victorians and Tudors to life in all their gory glory, Birmingham Stage Company (BSC) turns its attentions to the First and Second World Wars as they bring their latest versions of Terry Deary’s Horrible Histories to Richmond Theatre. Will Gore spoke to the company’s artistic director, Neal Foster.

Horrible Histories has been popular for BSC – can we expect more of the same? Doing the First and Second World Wars is slightly different to previous shows. While you can have knock-about fun with Henry VIII and Queen Victoria, with these ones you are obviously dealing with something much closer to home and people who experienced it are still alive. As opposed to the kings and queens, these shows are about ordinary people caught up in these terrible conflicts.

What is the secret of Horrible Histories’ success? If education is anything like it was when I was young, children learn about the events but feel removed. With Horrible Histories, because they see the events happening to young people on the stage, they can relate to it and imagine what it would have been like for them and there friends to be there.

How do the shows work? Although Terry Deary [author of Horrible Histories and Gory Stories] didn’t adapt these two productions, they are very much taken from his books. The Second World War show is more of a story than we normally do – it is about two children who are evacuated to Wales – and Frightful First World War is set on the Western front. The actors play multiple characters which the audience enjoys.

The production also uses 3D, doesn’t it? The audience dons 3D glasses to experience the bombing of Coventry, with debris flying out at them, and in the First World War show we give the audience the chance to experience what it might have been like to go over the top. It makes it a really exciting experience – when a big rock comes flying at you, you can’t help but flinch.

Is it hard to find light-hearted moments amid the dark history? In any situation like that there are ridiculous moments – people were court -martialed for ludicrous reasons. We show an incident when a soldier used his rifle to trip the enemy up as he was trying to carry his wounded friend away. He was court -martialed because, despite the reason he gave for doing it, he discarded his gun in the face of the enemy. It highlights all the absurdities that happen in war and both shows are poignant at the end.

So can children handle more than we give them credit for? We always underestimate what children are capable of understanding, enjoying and finding interesting. There is a lot of rubbish in theatre at the moment, puerile stuff like High School Musical. It is very enjoyable but it won’t test or challenge anybody.

Horrible Histories: Frightful First World War and Woeful Second World War, Richmond Theatre, June 23-27, visit ambassadortickets.com/ richmond or call 0844 871 765.