The History Boys

The History Boys

By definition, history is a train of events in human affairs; a continuous methodical record of public events, be they triumphs, discoveries, phenomena or defeats.

But as one of the boys in Alan Bennett's play testifies, a grasp of the facts is all well and good but it's the "acquiring of flavour" that gives them meaning and purpose.

Bennett's rite-of-passage drama is set in a northern English grammar school during the '80s when Margaret Thatcher was in power, an era when services were eroded and fearfulness was said to creep in. Time had caught up with Orwell's suffocating vision.


The History Boys gets off to a rousing start with Richard Griffiths's spectacular entrance as the larger-than-life English master and motorcylist Hector, an arrival befitting Mad Max but with a dash of wacky histrionic.

Hector is seen as a merchant of useless information; a maestro of quotations and literary allusions drawn from an idiosyncratic, sometimes dazzling, mental repository. He's also a pied piper for the class of bright, larking, sex-obsessed, anxious sixth-form boys who are preparing to take the entrance exam to study history at Oxford or Cambridge. But time is almost up for Hector, a staunch defender of traditional values, when the young usurper Irwin (Stephen Campbell Moore) takes charge armed with "focus" and shrewd tactics. A whiff of arrogance guards his diffidence and leanings.

Bennett, endowed with a luminous gift for language, creates a vigorous, witty playground of generational conflict, ambivalence, flirtation and debate, including no-go zones such as the Holocaust. The writing delves beneath the familiar uncertainty of youth to explore learning and leadership, and the purpose of education.

It may sound sober but Nicholas Hytner's production is hugely entertaining, passionate and gripping.

The brilliant cast rarely falters, whether wildly fidgeting or in sombre repose. The clever use of video projection and bursts of loud, pulsating pop music deftly prefaces each neatly contained scene in the utilitarian classroom strewn with movie posters and clutter. The boys are boisterous and engaging, among them Dominic Cooper as the pivotal Dakin, Samuel Barnett's Posner, Jamie Parker's Scripps and Russell Tovey's Rudge.

More than the sparkle of one-liners, metaphors and epigrams, Bennett has crafted one of the great humanist plays of our times. It presents truly heartbreaking moments of yearning and loss. The image of Hector collapsing into a vulnerable mess among his mostly inert charges is unforgettable. Griffiths's magnificent performance makes you feel the humanity and pain of the cajoling, seemingly haphazard yet inspirational mentor.

Even as The History Boys draws to a close there is a sense of continuation in what Bennett describes as "the length of little lives" trailing behind us and into the future. Whatever the melancholy that descends, the work's dazzling scope, humour, interrogating spirit and refusal to judge make it heartening and moral. A must-see.