History in the making

The History Boys is a National Theatre of Great Britain production, starring Richard Griffiths, Malcolm Sinclair and Maggie Steed, three English actors audiences may recognise from the TV series Pie in The Sky.

Richard Griffiths stars as English teacher, Hector. He’s a throwback to another age when teachers cuffed students over the head. Hector is a teacher with a florid turn of phrase who believes in teaching his students culture, because he wants them to learn something they’ll actually use in the real world. “You gave them an education,” he tells Mrs Lintott. “I gave them the wherewithal to resist it.” Hector is hedonistic, anachronistic and old fashioned. And his days are numbered.

There’s a new teacher in the quadrangle – Irwin (Moore). He’s determined to help the boys get into Oxford or Yale. His subject is history and he has a way of turning history on its head, a technique which he believes will give the boys the edge they need to succeed.

The boys themselves are typical teenagers – irreverent human sponges, soaking up everything around them and finding their way through life with explosions of energetic action and re-action, testing the boundaries of everything and everybody, including themselves.

When Hector’s extra curricular activities are discovered, the school principal seizes the opportunity to fire him. Hector doesn’t fight it. Irwin has replaced Hector in the classroom as well as the boys’ affections. But there is more seething underneath the surface than anybody realises and somebody’s going to hurt someone before the play is through.

The History Boys is an incredibly strong ensemble piece. There are no weak links in this production, which features songs, piano playing, skits, humour, high drama, French dialogue, not to mention a few life lessons. Richard Griffiths brings his considerable weight to bear in this role and makes it irrevocably his. Griffiths’ Hector is a real character. He’s the kind of teacher you wish you had when you were at school.

Malcolm Sinclair plays the invidious Headmaster, Hector’s nemesis. Headmaster has a huge inferiority complex. He is also the only character who is definably a ‘bad guy’. All the other characters have their moments, but none are as detestable as Headmaster. Maggie Steed plays Hector’s fellow teacher, Mrs Lintott. Steed delivers a marvellously dry performance. She has some of the best lines in the play. She is the comic relief in one way. She is also wise and, unlike Hector, able to laugh at herself. Mrs Lintott’s ability not to take it all too seriously is probably how she has survived for so long in the job.

Irwin is the generation next teacher. It’s a bit of a dead give away that he appears in the first scene in a wheelchair. It telegraphs what is to come, which would be my only criticism of this otherwise peerless production. Moore’s geeky Irwin is no light weight performance. Irwin turns out to be very much like Hector in one respect, but is his complete opposite when it comes to teaching style.

There are three main schoolboy characters in the play. Dakin (Cooper), Scripps (Parker) and Posner (Barnett). Scripps is a writer and the play’s narrator. Dakin is the jock everyone admires and desires. Posner is a not so secret and most ardent admirer of Dakin. Scripps and Posner both sing. Scripps plays the piano and Dakin just smoulders with pure sex appeal, which he’s only too happy to share around.

The staging deserves a mention because the sets are quite complex, with scenes moving from classroom to teacher’s common room and back again and again. This is accomplished via the movement of numerous panels, tables and chairs. The sets are struck predominantly by the actors in semi-darkness. To keep you informed, entertained and/or distracted during these orchestrated manoeuvres in the dark, a huge video screen on the wall at the back of the stage plays black and white video clips of student and teacher interactions at school. Some of it’s very relevant back story. Some of it’s more reminiscent of retro music videos with an 80’s soundtrack. Nonetheless, how the team makes the set changes go so smoothly throughout, considering the scale involved, is no small achievement.

The History Boys is Dead Poets Society meets Death of Salesman. Not everyone enjoys history, but everyone has one. One of the students defines history as “just one fucking thing after another”. Sometimes we choose the course of our lives, sometimes life just happens to us. What matters is how we choose to deal with what happens. That’s what makes us who we are. As the play concludes, this is one of the final lessons learnt by students and teachers alike. As it turns out, living with the results of history is the hardest lesson of all.

Philippa Wherrett

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The History Boys

Company: National Theatre of Great Britain with Sydney Theatre Company Venues: Sydney Theatre, Walsh Bay
Dates: to April 8, 2006

**Season Sold Out