The dark and hilarious one-man show, The Wolf of Poyais, comes to this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe – based on the astonishing true story of Gregor MacGregor, the 19th century Scottish adventurer who convinced hundreds of people to invest in, and in some cases emigrate to, a country that did not exist.
Often cited as one of history’s most audacious conmen, MacGregor created the fictional Central American territory of ‘Poyais” – complete with official documents, currency, land deeds and titles. Such was the scale of the deception that members of British high society bought into the scheme, trusting him with their fortunes, while settlers crossed the Atlantic in search of the promised land, only to discover they had bought into an elaborate fantasy.
Bringing this historical conman to life is Thom Tuck, Fringe veteran and acclaimed actor and comedian, who brings a high-energy, quick-witted and slyly charismatic presence to MacGregor. In the show, MacGregor addresses the audience directly as if he’s travelled forward in time, positioning himself as a lecturer, motivational guru and unapologetic mountebank eager to share the secrets of his success with a modern crowd. He guides the audience through the methods behind his infamous scheme, reframing deceit as ambition and corruption as entrepreneurship.
Written by Sam Went, co-founder of Blue Bar Productions and drawing on detailed historical research, The Wolf of Poyais is a one-man show that lets one of history’s great liars make his case directly to a modern audience – retelling one of the most extraordinary frauds of the nineteenth century with biting contemporary relevance.
Through charm, confidence and increasingly questionable logic, MacGregor builds a version of himself that is hard to doubt – and the same qualities that seduced his nineteenth-century victims are alive and well on the Fringe stage.
Then, MacGregor had land deeds and letters of introduction. Now, we have TED talks, cryptocurrency evangelists, wellness gurus and get-rich-quick podcasts. The Wolf of Poyais draws parallels between nineteenth-century fraud and today’s culture of wealth evangelism, financial scams and self-invention – asking why the language of the con remains so persuasive. The conman’s greatest asset has never been the scheme itself, but an understanding of what people want badly enough to stop asking questions. The tools may have changed. The desperate desire to believe has not.
Both hilarious and unsettling, The Wolf of Poyais is the unbelievable true story of a man who sold the world a lie – and very nearly got away with it.
