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Reviews
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The History BoysBy Alan Bennett It is a long time since Alan Bennett has had a new stage play produced. Those who see The History Boys will pray that its successor is close behind. Director Nicholas Hytner has been a great success in his year or so as director of the National and directed one of the hits of last year, Henry V. Now, this dream combination has come up with what must surely win awards for Best New Play of 2004. Its combination of comedy and pathos is extraordinary and it is saying something that after three hours in a theatre at the end of a heavy week, an extra hour would have been desirable. The History Boys are eight pupils, with varying accents, at a minor public school in the North. They form an Oxbridge Scholarship class of the 1980s and the play follows their education as well as their sexual and mental awakenings as they are groomed by two very different teachers. This is more than a simple coming of age drama. It is also an allegory on Thatcherite values, as culture and knowledge for its own sake give way to the spin and results-driven society that we see today. The mountainous Richard Griffiths as Hector, in outmoded Prince of Wales check and spotted bow tie, gives a moving performance as a man steeped in literature who wants to share it. There are shades here of Dead Poets Society, as Bennett puts his great love of words and aphorisms into the mouth of a quirky schoolmaster who is never short of a quote. Hector is a wonderful Bennett creation, one of life's losers but still able to enjoy himself until a fatal flaw is revealed. Griffiths fills the role perfectly. Clive Merrison's grim headmaster cares for little but league tables and a quiet life. He believes that fresh graduate Tom Irwin played by Hugh Grant lookalike, Stephen Campbell Moore will end the school's Oxbridge drought. The play opens twenty years later with the wheelchair-bound Irwin as a populist TV historian. His trip from arrival as fresh-faced supply teacher runs in parallel with the decline of his predecessor. Irwin is a sound bite man with a motto "the wrong end of the stick is the right one". He will embellish history in order to achieve his end of exam success for the pupils. Like his almost-namesake, David Irving he will even deny or rewrite the Holocaust for effect.
The play focuses on that very strange society, the English boys' minor public school, first addressed by Bennett in Forty Years On. The eight pupils are a fair cross-section of society and humanity, if the female 50 per cent, bravely represented by Frances de la Tour in a keynote speech, is eliminated. The boys are led by the handsome Dakin (Dominic Cooper) on whom everybody has a crush, from the school secretary through teachers to his colleagues. In particular, the excellent Samuel Barnett's Posner a super intelligent, late-developing, gay Jewish boy goes through agonies of lust. All is observed by Scripps, played by Jamie Parker, whose detachment suggests that he is representing the playwright on the periphery of the action. Nicholas Hytner ensures a good feel for period with pop hits from the 80s as Bob Crowley's simple but effective sets change. The always perceptive Bennett has a knack for making people laugh. He is at his very best in The History Boys, in particular in a scene straight out of French farce. He also specialises in the twist in the tail and as so often with his work, it is hard to hold tears back as Hector first finds his career and then his life on the rocks. The History Boys is a great play that explores male foibles at the same time as it looks at how today's society became as it is. Alan Bennett is a rare playwright and this shows him on top form. Visit our sponsor 1st 4 London Theatre to book tickets for the recast revival of The History Boys.
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