THE HISTORY Boys was a massive success when it first opened at the National Theatre. It enjoyed a sell out stint on Broadway and was transformed into an award winning movie which has become a cult classic.
This latest production at Chichester Festival Theatre hosted by the West Yorkshire Playhouse will surely only add to the play’s appeal.
It’s a joyous nostalgia trip through the boundless optimism and aspirations of youth, tempered by the wisdom of literature and academic reason.
The action is interspersed with blasts of pumping 1980s disco music which sets the sparsely furnished classroom scenes. Boys tumble into classrooms, joshing and fighting with each other, only to be held rapt in the spotlight once lessons begin. The simplicity of the set means that the focus is firmly on Bennett’s wonderful crafted script.
Philip Franks is compellingly eccentric as aging English tutor Hector, allowing the boys free reign in the classroom to explore the power of words. Thisleads to some hilarious scenes including a moment when the boys re-create a French brothel and are suddenly interrupted by earnest headmaster Thomas Wheatley.
Ben Lambert gives the stiff tight-lipped Irwin a polished sense of gravitas. He appears to have the answers to everything until the contradictions in his character are exposed by the swaggeringly cocky Dakin, George Banks . The pair handle the emotionally chargedscenes when Dakin reveals his love for Irwin superbly.
Harry Waller also shines as Scripps, delivering hilarious one-liners about his ‘romance‘ with God and Penelope Beaumont is equally well cast as the straight-laced school mistress Mrs Lintott, who reveals glimpses of her own youth by telling us: ‘Durham was where I had my first pizza you know.’
Classics form the music hall days are banged out by the classmates joyously on an old upright piano taking us on a trip through the northern grammar school classrooms of the playwrite’s own youth.
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