I so much want to like this. It is national treasure Alan Bennett, it’s witty, clever, thought-provoking, sad and fun but the episodic nature, wordiness and nonchalant sexual abuse left me cold and confused.
Winner of 30 major awards, and voted the Nation’s Favourite Play in 2013, Seán Linnen (Quiz, Chichester Festival Theatre, Queers, Old Vic) directs the 20th anniversary touring production fixing the piece firmly in the '80s with a soundtrack featuring Duran Duran, Tears for Fears, Adam and the Ants and similar, although other era references are lacking, perhaps an oversight by Bennett, perhaps deliberate to make the play timeless.
Set in a Sheffield grammar school, the league table-obsessed headmaster’s (Milo Twomey) dreams of dizzy heights rest on eight top-flight A level students being primed for the Oxbridge selection boards.
Challenging the role of education and teacher-pupil relationships, Bennett pits young blood Irwin (Son Of Rambow’s Bill Milner) and his ‘back door’ approach to securing that hitherto elusive Oxbridge place by hammering home “history as a performance”, releasing the ‘corsetting’ provided by curriculum against English and General Studies master Hector (understudy Jolyon Young more than ably stepping up) who believes firmly in education / The Arts for life and love, as a verbal fig leaf, and not for predictable exam results.
Hector’s lessons, brimming with shades of Dead Poets Society, feature Gracie Fields, war poetry by rote, maison de passe and joie de vivre behind locked doors, while dour Irwin pushes beyond recitation of the historical facts competently imbued by the sensible, middle-ground Mrs Lintott (Teachers’ Gillian Bevan) and challenges the bright young things to attack the subject unconventionally with truth irrelevant.
Whether history is ”just one fucking thing after another” or “five centuries of male ineptitude” or anything else, the question is how to report it, how to engage—and so comedy and pathos unfold amidst some beautiful harmonies and a cappella from the boys and a particularly superb “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered” by award-winning actor and writer Lewis Cornay, both fun and poignant as the lovelorn Posner.
Yazdan Qafouri is the devout Scripps (and tremendous live-on-stage piano player), Archie Christoph-Allen makes an impactful stage debut as the charismatic and arrogant Dakin (whose sexual advances on secretary Fiona are undertaken with military precision) while Teddy Hinde is on point as joker Timms.
Off West End (Offies) Award-winner Ned Costello is believable as sporty, working class Rudge, Curtis Kemlo (Love, RSC’s Much Ado About Nothing) is the thoughtful Lockwood, Mahesh Parmer debuts well as Muslim Akthar while Tashinga Bepete (Batgirl, The Railway Children Return) is aspiring actor Crowther.
The versatile set is designed by Grace Smart (The Winter’s Tale, The Globe, Top Girls, Liverpool Everyman) rotated and slid into place by the ever-present boys.
An amusing and worthy polemic on the purpose of education, love of learning and how young minds are or should be shaped by teachers… the cast is excellent, but I just couldn’t engage; however I'm clearly in the minority as the full house loved it. I’m off to see the film for another go.