THE HISTORY BOYS; touring till 25 November.
London.
THE HISTORY BOYS
by Alan Bennett.
Wyndhams Theatre.
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Thu & Sat 2.30pm.
Runs: 2hr 45min One interval.
TICKETS: 0870 950 0925.
www.delfontmackintosh.co.uk (£1.50 booking fee by 'phone and online)
Review: Rod Dungate 5 September 2006 at Birmingham Rep.
Great entertainment, some big questions debated, but I can’t place it precisely.
THE HISTORY BOYS is a great evening’s entertainment, no doubt about it. Excellent cast throughout, a witty play with some great one-liners, enough pathos to tug at your heart-strings and some sharp comments about our modern packaging of history.
Bennett is, in large part, looking back at his own experience of learning, of being taught - of being examined indeed. But he’s doing more than this, he’s looking at the process of learning and teaching (highly topical) and the, some might say cynical, grooming of students for examinations and university entrance. There are a set of plays and films that look at whacky teachers who have inspired groups of students on to great things – perhaps our present-day education debate could be livened up by reference to a few.
Many big questions are sparklingly debated – What is history? What is truth? Do we educate for life or for a career? What is good teaching? One message I take away from the play is a terrible one; if the boys in this play are in training for one result – Oxbridge – then in similar circumstances today the pressure is many times greater, and a great deal more efficiently organised.
And there would certainly be no room for a teacher like eccentric (and dodgy) Hector. Stephen Moore is marvellous as the bumbling, rambling teacher with a highly individual approach to General Studies. Bennett avoids sentimentalising him by ensuring that Hector doesn’t have a magic educational wand.
Orlando Wells provides a perfect contrast in Irwin, the young man taken on to improve students’ chances in their entrance exams. His explanation of how to succeed (virtually it’s take the untenable view and argue it) is convincingly portrayed and uncomfortably near the truth.
Marvellous performances from all the young lads and Isla Blair’s Mrs Lintott is elegant and strangely moving.
My main problem with the play as a whole, though, is that I find the educational establishment too difficult to place – it feels like an odd mixture of 50s and modern, of modern inner city comprehensive, modern grammar and 50s lesser public school. This may be in the writing or it may be more in direction and setting; but this apparent generalising blunts the play’s impact.
Boys:
Akthar: Marc Elliott.
Crowther: Akemnji Ndifornyen.
Dakin: Ben Barnes.
Lockwood: David Poynor.
Posner: Steven Webb.
Rudge: Philip Correia.
Scripps: Thomas Morrison.
Timms: Owain Arthur.
Teachers:
Headmaster: William Chubb.
Mrs Lintott: Isla Blair.
Hector: Stephen Moore.
Irwin: Orlando Wells.
TV Director: Derek Howard.
Make-up Lady: Tina Gray.
Other Boys: Ben Allen, Duncan Patrick, Stephen Uppal.
Director: Nicholas Hytner.
Recreated by: Simon Cox.
Designer: Bob Crowley.
Lighting Designer: Mark Henderson.
Music: Richard Sisson.
Video Director: Ben Taylor.
Sound Designer: Colin Pink.
Dialect Coach: Michaela Kennen.
Company Voice Work: Annemette Verspeak.
Dance: Jack Murphy.
2006-09-06 14:53:37