20 years ago, Alan Bennett’s ‘The History Boys’ opened at the National Theatre, and a classic was born. The show become a launch pad to stardom for many of its original cast members including Dominic Cooper, James Cordon, Sacha Dharwan, Russell Tovey, Jamie Parker, Andrew Knott and Samuel Barnett, whilst, in its own right, became famous for being a stark look at the education system through the positives and negatives of examinations and knowledge for knowledge’s sake.
20 years on, ‘The History Boys’ remains as relevant as ever as it heads out on a 20th anniversary tour. It introduces us to a group of students from Sheffield who, after achieving exceptional A Level results, are invited to sit the entrance exams for Oxford and Cambridge with the help of their teachers, each with very different styles of teaching. The ‘doesn’t follow the rules’ Hector who believes that knowledge comes from a range of topics and feels the boys’ heads of quotations, the straight-laced fact-based Irwin who invites them to enter the question from the side door, turning it around and adding some flavour in their answers and Mrs Lintott, the topic expert who brought the boys up to this high level. With the school headmaster looking at the boys’ chances of attending such prestigious schools as a chance to raise up the league table, the students and the teachers have to find a balance to open the doors to Oxford and Cambridge.
Eight performers play the bright young boys, each as individual as the last. In his professional stage debut, Archie Christoph-Allen impresses greatly as Dakin, the confident, cocky ‘leader of the gang’. Unafraid to talk back to his teachers, push their buttons and try his luck, he commands attention with Christoph-Allen winning over the audience with ease. It is Teddy Hinde as Timms who earns a great majority of the laughs, a class clown with a sharp and witty mind as Yazdan Qafouri’s Scripps, devoted to both religion and schoolwork, prides himself on a job well done whilst taking best friend Dakin’s antics in his stride. Ned Costello’s Rudge, proclaiming himself as the weakest academically of the group, has the audience (and the teachers) on his side as he fights his way to Oxford.
Lewis Cornay puts in a star turn as Posner. ‘I’m a Jew, I’m small, I’m homosexual and I live in Sheffield’ he proclaims as if declaring his own doom, in turn winning the hearts of the audience. Just as focussed on Dakin as he is on his schoolwork, we follow him through the ups and downs as he tries to battle both his exams and his emotions. Cornay also impresses with his vocal performances throughout, leading a number of songs including ‘Wish Me Luck as You Wave Me Goodbye’ and ‘Blackbird’.
Hector, played by Simon Rouse, has a unique approach to teaching, believing that getting the boys to memorise War poems and the endings to many a famous movie by heart will feel their minds with more than just the facts and figures. And whilst the students enjoy his teaching style as he allows them to have fun and explore their topics, they don’t enjoy the lifts that he offers on the back of his motorbike, and neither does the headmaster when he learns about these rides. Rouse is able to take a character whose questionable decisions and attitudes could easily make him unlikable and gives him heart, whilst his contrasting styles put him in direct competition with Bill Milner’s Irwin. The young teacher believes that education’s main purpose is the preparation for exams and their successful outcomes with Milner able to easily command attention and gain the trust and admiration of the boys as he teaches them different styles of answering the challenging exam questions.
Gillian Bevan’s Mrs Lintott is no nonsense with heart. She clearly loves her job and loves seeing the boys succeed, whilst stating that historians have become journalists, saying what is wanted to be heard rather than the deeper details, such as the role that women played in many an important historical event. Milo Twomey’s headmaster Felix has his heart set on league table climbing whilst desperately trying to control the behaviour of Hector and Irwin’s pleas for more timetable slots.
The set comprises mostly of a large, raised classroom/office that can be rotated to become a corridor or the playground. Desks, chairs and water coolers are wheeled in and out by the cast themselves as we are transported from the boy’s classroom to the teacher’s staffroom to the playground to the office. The decision to include music from the time setting of the piece (the 80’s) is a genius choice as with its lengthy running time of 2 hours and 45 minutes including the interval, the music adds a punch and helps to seamlessly cover the scene changes and it’s a lovely touch to have the cast often singing the popular tunes such as Tears for Fears ‘Shout. The act two opening performance of ‘Stand and Deliver’ is particularly impressive.
The way in which ‘The History Boys’ deep dives into the educational system remains as clever and relevant as it ever was. 60 years on from the time it is set in, we have to admit that, at times, things haven’t changed. There are still headmasters who dream of being at the top of the league table, teachers who differ in their styles, students striving for success regardless of being seen as not having the best of chances in life, the underlying theme of the haves and have nots and the questions of what education is and what is the most important element of it. It’s all there in this play and it’s all there in the real world, whether you notice it or not.
This is a show with heart that will pull at the heartstrings, make you laugh and make you question your own understanding of the education system. What is the most important, exam results and qualifications, real world knowledge or everything else that you learn along the way?
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