Stephen Moore in The History Boys
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Alan Bennett’s
The History Boys may be about the forging of a general education in pursuit of a historical one, but the play itself is now a piece of theatrical history of its own. Premiered at Britain’s National Theatre in May 2004, it has since become one of the most successful plays in the history of the South Bank—bouncing in and out of the repertoire for the past two years, going on two extensive national tours, as well as securing Tony Award-winning glory on Broadway and being made into both a hit radio play (now available on audio tape) and movie version, with the original cast.
Now it is finally claiming its long overdue place in the West End, and what’s both striking and exciting about its arrival there is not just the joy of welcoming a group of old friends back who have previously made their ways so warmly into our lives, but that they can live on now just as fondly in new guises. Like David Hare’s Amy’s View, which was also originally seen at the National and recently returned to the West End, this is now a contemporary classic that’s a touchstone for both the careers of their playwrights and for our own lives.
Given the intimate, collective ensemble strength of the original company of The History Boys, it could have been slightly unnerving to watch the play inhabited by a new set of strangers, but the mark of a good play, of course, is its ability to adapt, change and even deepen with different performers. While Isla Blair may not have nailed the brittle, mordant humour that Frances de la Tour so memorably and perhaps inimitably brought to the role of Mrs. Lintott, Stephen Moore’s Hector steps into the large shadow cast by Richard Griffiths’ mountainous performance with a heartbreaking vulnerability as a teacher whose unconventional classes—and even more unconventional trips on the back of his motorbike—provides his students a different kind of learning altogether.
Ben Barnes and Orlando Wells
in The History Boys
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Bennett has, of course, always excelled at being a detached observer of human behaviour in all its foibles and idiosyncrasies; but this deeply personal and minutely observed account of a bunch of bright grammar school boys preparing for their Oxbridge entrance exams, as he himself did in the 1950s (and the original director of this production, Nicholas Hytner, also subsequently did, whose work is here recreated by Simon Cox), is clearly based on lived experience.
The play is larger than this narrow personal reach suggests, because everyone, of course, has been to school. And this richly funny, wonderfully characterised and superbly intelligent play about education and history, learning and culture, transports us all straight back to the classroom. Would that we were all as fortunate as this particular class. No doubt for reasons of theatrical economics, we only get to meet four teachers and eight pupils—a teacher/student ratio that would be envied by any school in the land. Here they’re being provided with the kind of liberal education that teaches them to think for themselves—and in the process throws down plenty for us to think about, too.
The chaotic general studies classes of Moore’s kindly, captivating Hector may take place mysteriously behind locked doors, but he unlocks in his charges the kind of passions that have them quoting T.S. Eliot and A.E. Housman, enacting scenes from
Brief Encounter and singing George Formby and Gracie Fields songs. But as William Chubb’s uptight headmaster complains, the results are unpredictable and unquantifiable. Far more rigorous are the history classes of a new arrival, the supply teacher Mr. Irwin (Orlando Wells), who schools them in the kind of techniques that are most likely to impress a bored examiner.
Like its students, the play is also intellectually inquisitive and physically agile, leaping around with thoughts and bounding around with ideas. The youthful cast of students—including Ben Barnes as a sexually provocative Dakin, Philip Correia’s slouchingly self-aware Rudge and Steven Webb’s vulnerable gay Posner—bring a boundless energy to it, too. They keep this play as blissfully buoyant as it is playful and poignant.
The History Boys
By Alan Bennett
Directed by Nicholas Hytner
Recreated by Simon Cox
Wyndham’s Theatre