The History Boys

Watch the History Boys - guaranteed, it will bring back a few memories from school and the rat race that started for most of us 10 years ago! - Kandarp


The History Boys - the play
The action of the play takes place in Cutlers' Grammar School, Sheffield, a fictional boys' grammar school in the north of England. Set in the 1980s, the piece follows a group of history pupils preparing for the Oxbridge (Oxford and Cambridge) entrance examinations under the guidance of two teachers (Irwin and Hector) with contrasting styles.Irwin teaches the essay style of brisk generalities flavoured with sufficient facts and quotations to engage the examiner's interest and disguise the boy's ignorance in the hope of programming them for success. This method was one of 'false pretences', that Bennett felt he had had to teach himself in order to succeed in examinations, one academic pursuit he constantly had trouble with. Hector however wishes to teach knowledge as it is and believes that such contrived methods are practically indecent.The play blends both comedy and tragedy, with multiple layers and themes, including growing up, the wider purpose of education in adult life, pederasty, teaching methods, homosexuality, and the English education system.

Indeed the role of Posner with his hopeless attraction to Dakin, fondness of Hector's teaching methods and late development into adulthood represents deep autobiographical details of Bennett's life.

The History Boys (2006) - Movie reviewed by Jamie Russell (http://www.bbc.co.uk/films/2006/10/04/the_history_boys_2006_review.shtml)

Part school days nostalgia trip, part gay-themed drama Alan Bennett's The History Boys won endless awards when it hit The National Theatre. Cut'n'pasted to the big screen - same director, same cast - it's kept all its probing, comic smarts. Richard Griffiths plays inspired and inspiring English teacher Hector, who clashes with young supply teacher Irwin (Stephen Campbell Moore) while coaching Sixth Formers for Oxbridge entrance exams. As stuffy tradition meets modern technique, lessons will be learned.The clash of the masters is academic; at least until Hector's caught groping one of the boys (hands on teaching perhaps?) and Bennett's classroom drama is suddenly laced with dark longing and sexual desire. It lets this teacher-pupil drama cut deeper than the insipid platitudes of Dead Poet's Society. Think Grange Hill rewritten by WH Auden: slightly fusty but wickedly witty.

"THE YOUNG CLASS GET TOP MARKS"

Little is gained by uprooting this play from the stage, but nothing's lost either. The young cast get top marks for battling Bennett's improbably middle aged dialogue while Richard Griffiths - once Uncle Monty in Withnail & I - gives Hector gravitas (and a 60 inch waistline). Elsewhere, Frances de la Tour plays a deadpan history teacher ("How depressing it is to teach five centuries of masculine ineptitude") and Clive Merrison pitches his conniving headmaster somewhere between Gollum and Mr Burns from The Simpsons. It's a mark of how high this movie sets the bar that these actors can't steal the show.

Like the Oxbridge (Oxford and Cambridge) entrance exams the pupils sit, such excellence is expected, not exceptional.