The History Boys at Theatre Royal Bath and on tour – review

Twenty years after it stormed the National Theatre and just over ten since it was named the nation’s favorite play, The History Boys is back, still as funny and thoughtful, angry and challenging as ever. It’s a work that reveals the steel behind Alan Bennett’s cardigan’d cozy exterior, a play that’s driving question about the reason for education has become even more pertinent after years of Tory cuts.

Like all great plays, I have different reactions to it every time I see it. In this 20th-anniversary production, directed by Seán Linnen, it’s the way that Gillian Bevan’s Mrs Lintott becomes our sympathetic core, the middle woman whose commonsense approach to education combines both the grounded and the dream. In a work that pits two ethoses against each other and appears to be a tribute to the dream of education for education’s sake, Bennett has created the kind of teacher that still inspires today.

Set in a Sheffield grammar school where a bunch of bright young things dream of Oxbridge, the play pits English teacher Hector against young buck Irwin in a battle for hearts and minds. Hector plies his students with quotations from the war poets, re-enacting scenes from Brief Encounter, and believes the purpose of education is to “feel it, take it, pass it on, pass it on boys”, where learning poems by rote is worth more to the soul than grades on an exam paper. Irwin meanwhile, as fresh-faced as the boys in his charge, believes that to impress the dons of Oxbridge, the boys need to approach history through “the back door” and that “history nowadays is not a conviction, it’s a performance”.

At the heart of all educators is the question of how we shape young minds, and Bennett, for all you believe that he places his hat firmly in Hector’s corner, gives equal weight to both sides. Ultimately the play surges with the love of learning, both Hector and Irwin stimulate minds and ask learners to think for themselves. Yet it’s the no-nonsense Lintott, with her sense that the histrionics of men have turned history into journalism (look around at television documentaries today and Bennett hit the nail on the head) that becomes the heart of the piece. An education without ego, with a deep sense of care for those in her command, makes you realise that as long as teachers like this exist, the kids will be alright.

It is impossible to discuss the play without touching on the waters Bennett muddies. Hector’s predilections to ‘grope’ the boys on the back of his motorbike, the late scene where sexually confident student Dakin successfully seduces Irwin, feel even more uncomfortable. Bennett, one assumes, links Plato’s assertion that there is an erotic exchange between tutor and pupil in the sharing of knowledge, but watching it today, when thankfully safeguarding student safety is much tighter, it still feels distressing. Both Hector and Irwin are trapped in unresolved desires, their immersion in scholarship hides a deep loneliness. These scenes make the play morally complex and stop us from fully identifying with Hector, but does it tip the play too much away from what seems to be the main crux? I think each audience member will feel differently, for me, it alienates.

Nicholas Hyther’s original production helped drive its success, and its use of video screens was an early proponent of the form. Linnen’s production asks its cast to manually shift scenery, yet in Chi-San Howard’s movement direction, the transitions are slick and well-drilled. Bevan is terrific as Linton, as is Simon Rouse’s Hector, all telling quotations, who begins to crumble as he sees the education world leave his philosophies behind. Bill Milner’s Irwin is all buttoned-up ego, while Milo Twomey is a hoot as the ambitious headmaster desperate for results. The original production made stars of its “Boys” including Dominic Cooper, Samuel Barnett, Sacha Dharwan, Jamie Parker, and James Corden, and while Linnen’s production doesn’t find new angles for the current crop, there is strong work from Teddy Hinde as the class clown, Archie Christoph-Allen as the cocky Dakin and Lewis Cornay as Posner, falling in love and discovering how art can reveal the soul.

This revival is a reminder of the play’s joys and complexities, one that will do it no harm in keeping The History Boys out front as the nation’s favourite work.