The History Boys @ Sewell Barn Theatre

Filled with humour, wisdom and song, it’s easy to see why The History Boys is so critically acclaimed. It first premiered at the National Theatre in 2004, then went to Broadway and was also adapted into a film in 2006 with a young James Corden playing Timms. The story is about a group of young boys at a Sheffield grammar school being groomed for Oxbridge and the young actors are brilliant. Dominic Sands makes a solid job of playing confident Timms, while my favourite Posner is played by the very well cast Luke McCulloch. “I’m a Jew, I’m dangly, I’m a homosexual and I live in Sheffield. I’m fucked,” he says - and that’s in-between all his singing and dancing. In the play he proclaims his love to fellow pupil Dakin (played aptly by a good looking Joe Darbyshire) by singing Bewitched Bothered and Bewildered while Scripps (Jack Rumsey) accompanies him on the piano.

But he isn’t alone in his sexual desires towards Dakin, as their (main) general studies teacher Hector (David White) is eventually discovered touching Dakin and some of the other boys when they ride on the back of his motorcycle. There is a strange complicity to his proclivities throughout the play. Dakin says “it’s my turn on the bike” as he grabs Hector’s spare helmet. Of course the implications are sinister but the boys tolerate his behaviour, finding it almost humorous in the way that everything else about Hector is funny. Hector’s teaching methods include acting out brothel scenes in French and teaching them how to sing Gracie Fields’ Wish Me Luck (As You Wave Me Goodbye)

One thing the three teachers Dorothy Linlott (played by Gillian Tichborne), Hector, and Irwin – a supply teacher brought in to prep them for their entrance examinations to Oxbridge – have in common is that they want to impart knowledge – even if it’s for different reasons. “I give them the wherewithal to resist education,” says Hector who places little importance in getting into the top education institutions. At the end of the play he says: “Pass the parcel, that’s the game I wanted you to learn”. Ironically, Hector’s generosity in sharing a rounded knowledge of the world does help them get into university.

The theatre space has been well utilised for this performance. The chalkboard floor and wall give you a sense of being in a school. And by moving a few “school props” around we are nicely maneuvered from the classroom, to the headmaster’s office, and even outdoors. The play begins with Hector coming into school on his motorcycle – with video footage of this (pre-filmed) projected onto a fake classroom window they all look out off. The play ends full circle with him biking off but with devastating consequences this time.

History is the subject of the play. Rudge (Greg Arundell) amusingly exclaims: “History, it’s just one fucking thing after another.” But more seriously Dakin calls Irwin’s method of teaching out as subjunctive history. He explains that the boys must move away from standardised thinking if they want to get into the top educational institutions. This method works when they think outside the box about the Reformation but it doesn’t go down quite as well when they talk about the Holocaust. Though as it turns out, something they were loathsome to discuss in any other terms than exclaiming that it was “an unprecedented horror”, is brought up in an examination question. Towards the end of the play Dakin makes his feelings for Irwin known, saying they were going to go on a date and that: “It’s not just in the subjunctive either, it is going to happen.” David Green is well cast as Irwin, he is in equal measures teachery and young enough to be one of the boys.

Historical references are obvious in many forms, the notable absence of women in the play apart from Linlott serves to highlight their absence is society and education in that period. That very afternoon, before I turn up for the play, I was sent a link with the headline “Education Secretary Nicky Morgan: ‘Arts subjects limit career choices’". So nowadays we do have women in more prominent roles but it doesn’t mean they won’t hold archaic opinions themselves (thank God she’s just been replaced). In the play, Lintott says: “in the seventies there was a consoling myth that not very bright children could always become artists.” Again, art is meaningless is the implication. As I sit in Sewell Barn Theatre watching a well produced and very enjoyable version of this play to a full house, I wonder if we are returning to the bad old times – the mindset of the1980's or 1950's when Bennett was growing up in the north and applying for Oxford himself.