There are some stories so extraordinary that the difficulty in putting them on stage is not making them interesting but making the theatre as interesting as the story.
The Wolf of Poyais, written by Sam Went and performed by Thom Tuck, takes on one of the most extraordinary confidence tricks in British history, the story of Scottish soldier, adventurer and fraudster Gregor MacGregor, the man who managed to sell people land in a country that did not exist.
Born in Scotland in 1786, he became a soldier and adventurer, fought in the South American wars of independence and then performed perhaps his greatest feat of imagination. He invented Poyais.
Not merely a piece of land. A country.
It had a government, currency, titles, documents, land for sale and, most importantly, investors. MacGregor styled himself Cazique of Poyais and persuaded people not merely to invest their money in his imaginary state, but actually to emigrate there.
Tuck is an engaging performer and there is much to enjoy in his retelling of the story. There is humour in the sheer audacity of MacGregor’s inventions, but also something increasingly uncomfortable underneath it. We recognise the mechanisms. Confidence, aspiration, exclusivity and the promise that everyone else is missing an opportunity which you have been clever enough to spot.
Poyais may belong to the nineteenth century, but the salesman certainly doesn’t.
Yet the performance I see is not quite as assured as MacGregor himself needs to be.
There is an early run quality to parts of the delivery, including a noticeable reliance on notes. And perhaps the sight of a reviewer sitting in the front row scribbling into a notebook does little to settle the nerves, but in this particular show confidence matters more than most.
MacGregor’s entire business model depends upon absolute certainty. He needs to walk into a room and make the impossible sound not merely possible, but irresistible. Whenever that certainty slips in the performance, even momentarily, something of the character’s dangerous magnetism slips with it.
This is perhaps where knowing the story beforehand as I do, (rather too well) changes the experience. If MacGregor and Poyais are completely new to you, revelation follows revelation. If you already know where the ships are going, however, your attention moves from what is being told towards how it is being told.
And that also makes the ending particularly important.
For me, this is where the production is weakest.
I won’t reveal the final theatrical sleight of hand because doing so would be unfair both to performer and audience. Suffice to say that I find it considerably less satisfying than the ending history itself provided.
Because MacGregor’s real final act is astonishing.
After Poyais, after the ruined investors, after settlers had crossed the Atlantic to discover that the promised country essentially wasn’t there, MacGregor somehow continued. Eventually he returned to Venezuela, where his genuine contribution to the country’s struggle for independence allowed him to reclaim another version of himself, not MacGregor the fraudster, but General MacGregor, hero of the Republic.
He was restored to military rank, received a pension and died in Caracas in 1845, buried with full military honours.
Perhaps that is the greatest confidence trick of them all.
There is no neat punishment, no theatrical reckoning, no satisfying moment when the villain finally receives his due. MacGregor simply finds another story about himself, and this time it happens to be true.
That seems to me a more intriguing conclusion than this production gives us.
Nevertheless, The Wolf of Poyais is an entertaining encounter with a fascinating character, and Tuck and Went have found a smart contemporary frame through which to examine him.
Maybe that is MacGregor’s final trick. Two hundred years later, we are still buying tickets to Poyais.
Playing until August 30th 2026,https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/2026WOLFOFP
Reviewer: Greg Holstead
Reviewed: 7th August 2026
North West End UK / Theatre Muse UK Rating:
Running time – 1hr