Last nights triumph at the Theatre Royal shows what a small group of talented actors, a few chairs and a national treasure can do when locked up in a north Yorkshire playhouse for a couple of weeks and told to get on with it. The History Boys is rightly regarded as the most accomplished of Alan Bennett’s plays and his unnerving ability to catch the mannerisms, morals, hypocrisy and  dreams of middle England in its verbal tics, judders and devastatingly frank and funny dialogue is one of his trademarks, and here, he does not disappoint.

The plot is very simple and follows a summer of extra history lessons in a Sheffield Grammar School given by two very different teachers. The pupils in this class are a collection of young men of various abilities and levels of confidence, who all share one dream, to get into University at Oxford or Cambridge.   The discussions between these characters about the nature and reason for education are provocative, challenging and very funny.

The staging is simple, clean and quietly done. The evocative sketched out school environment suggesting tiles and corridors and the faint whiff of chalk dust. Quick changes, a few chairs and slowly revolving stage emphasise the school room environment, the lighting and costumes are understated with an attention to detail that perhaps only Princess Anne would appreciate, but no matter. It works.

There’s a lot going on in this play, and it all revolves around integrity in it’s many form, but I’m not going to spoil any of it for you, enough to say it’s very very funny in parts, both with real intent and in a darkly sardonic way. I laughed loudly and heartily many times throughout the night and left feeling properly entertained.  All the actors shine, there’s not a dud amongst them, but then with the calibre of the cast, directors and writer, this seems quite right. Like a plate of undersliced cake in an upmarket Harrogate tea emporium, you know the price reflects its quality ingredients.  

There are some wonderfully funny set pieces which had the audience roaring.  The boys play at acting out the endings of old black and white films, betting the teacher he won’t be able to guess them. That these films are ‘Now Voyager’ and ‘Brief Encounter’ is perhaps a nod to Bennett’s gloriously camp delight in arch performance, (I meant to do it, Fred, I really meant to do it. I stood there trembling right on the edge, but I couldn't. I wasn't brave enough. )but these ‘boys’ perform these scenes better than any drag queen I’ve ever seen, each flouncy draw on the cigarette, exaggerated nod and over emphasised ‘h’ and the unmet yearning masked in chintzy propriety is  perfectly caught.


I loved this play, it was a delight to watch, not a moment too long and each scene balanced to perfection.  Bennett’s such a lovely clever clogs and wants us to know it, there’s a scene completely in French, which is saucy, utterly comprehensible and very very funny. It’s a testimony to the mans breadth that he can combine a lesson of French subjunctive verbs and the most breathtaking and audacious use of the word cunt from the Theatre Royals stage I have yet had the joy to witness.  There was an audible gasp of shock around the auditorium, and that, my sweet reader, is why I Love Alan, because he is one of the few living playwrights who can make an audience of Sussex matrons & Poofs, titter, laugh snobbishly, gasp with shock, mutter with outrage (over a gerund, imagine!), be stunned into silence and then be charmed by him and leave thinking.  

It’s like when my decorous Aunty May took a fit at our cousins wedding and fell over thrashing widely and trashing everything in her gauze hat and farting loudly. It was very funny, not her epilepsy, that wasn’t’ funny at all, but the farts. It’s a family thing and Bennett gets it spot on.  We’re his family, the rest of us that share this island with him and his wonderful mind, and he loves us all even if, sometimes, he doesn’t’ really like us at all.

All week till Sat 3rd at the Theatre Royal and on tour
Tickets here: