The History Boys

Synopsis

A comic drama about adolescent schoolboys. A group of bright, funny sixth-form boys in pursuit of sex, sport and a place at university. A maverick English teacher at odds with the young and shrewd supply teacher. A headmaster obsessed with results, and a history teacher who thinks he's a fool.

Our Review:

Damian Robson - 4 May 2010

The Theatre Royal plays host to The History Boys, a revival of the much loved play and subsequently, film, by Alan Bennett. The play has itself has created its own history in the six years since it first opened at the National Theatre, in May 2004.

The play concerns the trials of a group of boys at a Sheffield grammar school in the 1980’s and their undertaking of the prestigious Oxbridge exams, over seen by their English Language teacher, Hector (Gerald Murphy), who has a penchant for giving the boy’s wisdom, knowledge and the occasional ‘lift’ home on his motorbike. Hector is seen as out of touch by the headmaster of the school and the board of governors, yes, you can always trust Bennett to hold a mirror up to society and to poke it with a very sharp stick, or hit it a way that Hector would do to his pupils, always very irreverent and tongue in cheek. To rectify Hector’s failings in getting the boys through the exams, the headmaster brings ...

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