Just over a decade since it was voted the UK’s favourite play, Alan Bennett’s The History Boys is notable for three things: its career-boosting properties (the original 2004 production helped launch James Corden and Russell Tovey), its zingers (history as “just one fucking thing after another”) and a misplaced sentimentality about erudite teachers with wandering hands. What’s a quick squeeze of the balls, the play seems to ask, so long as the boys’ minds are being stimulated?
The 20th anniversary revival, directed by Seán Linnen, could be another star-maker. As the lovesick gay student Posner, one of a class of Sheffield sixth-formers being coached for the Oxbridge entrance exam by teachers with conflicting philosophies, Lewis Cornay has the expressively elfin looks of a young Eddie Redmayne and the talent to match. Archie Christoph-Allen laces the laddish Dakin’s swagger with vulnerability, and Teddy Hinde is boisterous fun as Timms (the Corden role). Elsewhere, Bill Milner, child star of Son of Rambow, is splendidly clenched as the repressed new teacher Irwin.
For all its vitality, the production can’t temper the play’s blase attitude toward sexual harassment and teacher-pupil intimacy. Bennett stacks the deck in favour of Hector, played here by Simon Rouse, who is tweedy rather than seedy. His pupils joke about being “scarred for life”, while the headteacher who pressures him to resign is a vile homophobe. The only homophobe in the entire school, in fact. Despite this being set in 1983, none of the boys even flinch at Posner, let alone taunt him. Then again, the absence of any pop-culture references more recent than Brief Encounter proves that Bennett never bothered to think himself into the era.
Here, though, is where the revival excels. It opens to general puzzlement with the boys’ a capella rendition of St Elmo’s Fire, promising a Brat Pack (if not Brat) take on the material. So begins a smart sprucing up which extends to lively scene changes, period pop (Duran Duran, OMD) and even a stomp-a-long to Adam and the Ants’ Stand and Deliver. Purists may clutch their pearls but Linnen and his musical director Eamonn O’Dwyer bring a welcome new-broom approach to a play that already feels like ancient history.
• At Theatre Royal, Bath, until 31 August. Then touring
