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Stage

Learning curves

Well-crafted and well-performed, The History Boys is a lesson in the clash between academics and ambition.

By COLETTE BANCROFT
Published August 27, 2006

[Photo by Joan Marcus]

Fine acting brings individuality to the Boys. From left are Samuel Barnett, Dominic Cooper, Russell Tovey, Andrew Knott, Sacha Dhawan and James Corden.

NEW YORK

Everyone who thinks the FCAT is a good idea ought to see The History Boys.

So should everyone who has been a teacher. And heck, everyone who has been a student. Hilarious, tender and unabashedly intelligent, The History Boys explores the education of the heart as well as the head.

It doesn't sound like a surefire premise for a Broadway hit: Eight bright British students hoping to get into prestigious universities are tutored by a pair of eccentric teachers with very different ideas about education. The play, set in the 1980s, takes place in a classroom, a teachers' staff room and a headmaster's office.

No knights in armor burst into song, no romances blossom, no oldies rock music is trotted out.

But The History Boys has been a sold-out smash since it opened at the Broadhurst Theatre in April, winning pretty much every best play award handed out this year. It scored six Tonys, tying it with the original 1949 production of Death of a Salesman for most Tonys for a nonmusical.

That followed an award-winning run at the National Theatre in London, where The History Boys premiered in May 2004; a sold-out international tour; and the making of a film version, squeezed in before the Broadway run, which was just extended to Oct. 1. The movie is scheduled for U.S. release in November, to better position it for Oscar nominations.

The History Boys was written by Alan Bennett, who is known to Americans mainly as a member of Beyond the Fringe, a '60s satirical revue, but who in Britain is regarded as a national treasure for his work in TV, film and theater.

Bennett teamed with director

Nicholas Hytner for the stage and screen versions of The History Boys.

Remarkably, the superb cast has remained largely intact through all those iterations, including the mighty Richard Griffiths, who has scored a number of best actor awards for his performance as the charismatic English teacher, Hector.

Griffiths, a character actor so far best known to American audiences as Harry Potter's dreadful Uncle Vernon, is simply perfect

as the quirky, sardonic teacher who has an indelible effect on his students.

Hector has been assigned to coach eight of his best pupils for their entrance exams into university history programs. Their school's closest equivalent in this country might be a high school international baccalaureate program: These boys are among the brightest in the system.

Although Hector's field is English, he is a polymorph of knowledge, passionate about learning itself rather than any one subject. It's clear that for him the act of teaching is the highest form of expression, and in his classroom scenes with the boys he's the kind of enthralling teacher students remember all their lives.

But the control-freak headmaster wants to get his students into Oxford and Cambridge, and he doesn't trust Hector to launch them. "It isn't that he doesn't produce results," he says. "He does. But they are unpredictable and unquantifiable, and in the current educational climate that is no use. . . . There is inspiration, certainly, but how do I quantify that?"

Looking for someone who doesn't see the notion of quantifying inspiration as ludicrous, he brings in a young teacher named Irwin as a second coach, dangling a permanent position as reward if the boys get high marks.

Irwin, played icily by Stephen Campbell Moore, is everything Hector isn't. Where Hector loses himself in the joy of the boys arguing a point or enacting a movie scene, Irwin is always coolly working the angles for his own advancement; it's no wonder we see a glimpse of him in the future as a political consultant.

Irwin tells the boys, "History nowadays is not a matter of conviction. It's performance. It's entertainment. And if it isn't, make it so." As exam prep, he urges them to take contrarian positions just to dazzle graders - even if it means arguing that Stalin and Hitler weren't such bad guys.

The voice that mediates between Hector and Irwin (and the only significant female character) is another history teacher, Mrs. Lintott. Through most of the play's run (and in the film), she's played by the delectably dry Frances de la Tour, who returned to the Broadhurst last week. She's another Harry Potter vet, having played Madame Olympe Maxime in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

When I saw the play, the role was filled by Maggie Steed, who did a fine, crisp job with such lines as "Can you, for a moment, imagine how dispiriting it is to teach five centuries of masculine ineptitude?"

But Hector and Irwin are the main combatants, and they aren't just battling over teaching methods or academic concepts of history. It's their students' allegiance that matters.

The boys, bursting with energy and charm, come across at first like a boxful of very smart puppies. But as the actors skillfully delineate their characters, they become individuals, from doggedly ambitious Rudge (Russell Tovey) to high-minded but struggling Scripps (Jamie Parker), and, in two of the play's most galvanizing performances, the beautiful, manipulative Dakin (Dominic Cooper) and the all-too-vulnerable Posner (the wonderful Samuel Barnett, who has racked up several featured actor awards).

They're an attractive bunch - in July, they doffed their school ties and white shirts to star in a glossy fashion layout in the Sunday New York Times Magazine - but they also handle the play's witty, rapid-fire lines like real pros.

The History Boys is often a very funny play, as in an uproarious French lesson in the form of an improvised scene in a brothel.

But its dramatic conflict takes it into controversial territory.

Teaching young adults is an occupation with built-in perils. Whatever a teacher's sexual orientation, being surrounded by all that youthful energy and beauty can be distracting, and sometimes disastrous.

Both Hector and Irwin are tempted, and one of them is observed touching a boy inappropriately, with calamitous results.

The play's intellectual questions about the nature of history merge with its sensitive, sometimes heartbreaking unfolding of personal history, with all its denials and revisions.

The History Boys is a lesson in what we learn from teachers, and how far that reaches beyond the classroom. Bennett's marvelous touch with language and a stellar cast make it a delightful assignment.

Colette Bancroft can be reached at (727) 893-8435 or bancroft@sptimes.com

REVIEW

The History Boys, a play by Alan Bennett, continues through Oct. 1 at the Broadhurst Theatre, 235 W 44th St., New York City. For ticket information, call 212 239-6200 or go to www.historyboysonbroadway.com.

[Last modified August 25, 2006, 09:21:45]