Government cuts Founders' Building upkeep fund - The Founder

The Founder | Wednesday 25 November 2009
E X T R A
19
Arts
All
knowledge
is precious...
The History Boys
by Alan Bennett
Another
point of
view
On the same
production
Performed in The Student Workshop’s infamous
“Suicide Slot” (in which productions
are performed with limited tech, budget and
rehearsal time), Grace Holliday’s production
of Alan Bennett’s ‘The History Boys’ had a
lot to live up to: not only was it expected to
meet the high standard achieved by the three
productions in this slot previous, but it also
stands as being the first RHUL production of
this academic year.
Thankfully this production of Bennett’s
critically lauded text lived up to those expectations,
the end result being a powerful,
highly comical play that questions (rather
than teaches) how society values education.
Set in a grammar school in eighties northern
England, the play focuses on a class of
history pupils and their teachers who are
preparing them for the Oxbridge entrance
examinations, despite their teachers’ contrasting
styles.
Hector (Alisdair Hinton) believes in teaching
knowledge, favouring English Literature
as a way to ensure that his pupils are cultured,
well-rounded human beings. Irwin
(Ben Lawson) on the other hand teaches the
boys a more general essay style, encouraging
them to explore unorthodox perspectives of
history through unusual facts and controversies,
in the hope that this will gauge an
examiners interest enough to make the pupils
stand out.
The boys are led by cocksure Dakin
(Lawrence Brasted), a good-looker whom
everyone from the school secretary to fellow
history boy Posner (Ben Hodson) fancies.
To complicate things further Hector is
a closeted homosexual, struggling with
desires that he nevertheless acts upon in one
instance with a pupil at a significant turning
point in the play.
As Hector, Hinton’s relationship with the
boys admittedly wasn’t always convincing.
Whilst there is of course an internal struggle
with the anti-exam teacher, the role was at
times not played confidently enough, meaning
that his presence in earlier scenes with
the boys was lost.
However Hinton came into his own once
the uneasy truth of his character is revealed,
handling the troubled soul of Hector with
sensitivity showing him to be a brave, but
flawed human being.
Ben Lawson’s Irwin proved to be a stand
By James Woodhouse
out performance, played with such maturity
and spirit that an audience may indeed want
to question the value of originality against
truth.
Supported by a memorably eccentric Dean
Elliot as the league-table driven Headmaster
and Sophie Foulds as the indifferent Mrs Lintott,
the teachers were a force to be reckoned
with.
The History Boys were played wonderfully
by the eight-strong ensemble, the cast
being the key to this production’s energetic
atmosphere.
Brasted had an excellent and wisely layered
performance as the over-confident Dakin,
and the sense of intrigue in his scenes with
Irwin was well crafted. Karl Mercer was
very engaging as Scripps shifting in and out
of monologue almost effortlessly, and Josh
Ward’s Timms kept the class dynamic up
with great comic timing. Special mention
must also be given to Ben Hodson who gave
a brilliantly understated and brave performance
as Posner, a smart young Jewish man
troubled by self-discovery.
The cast paced Bennett’s text very well,
knowing exactly when to step up or down
a beat when a scene demanded so. Because
of this the production could have benefitted
from quicker lighting transitions, as it is
always uncomfortable to see an actor visibly
want to move out of a scene.
The curiously contemporary soundtrack
also did the production no favours in establishing
the eighties setting of this wellknown
play, Bennett surely intending it to
be a metaphor for how society struggles to
decide between Hector’s “reason” and Irwin’s
“function”-the debate that undoubtedly was
at its height under the Thatcher reign.
Despite some of these minor issues, one
could not help but be charmed by this
delightfully funny and poignant drama. Effectively
staged from tense opening to triumphant
end, The History Boys should be seen
as a great achievement for the fantastic cast,
well executed by director Grace Holliday and
her crew.
Whilst today the world continues to struggle
and much of theatre and film continues to
tell us so, The History Boys emerge victorious,
and -most importantly- with optimism.
In the words of the great Hector, “pass it on
boys…”
E X T R A
Arts
Write reviews!
arts@thefounder.co.uk
By Paul Philo
One of the boys in the closing stages of the
play sums up thus: “History – it’s just one
fucking thing after another”. Quite so.
The word ‘fucking’ seems apposite since
the sexual impulse, in whatever direction it
manifests itself, often proves to be the trump
card in the personal history of both teachers
and pupils.
As I sat perusing the set before the action
proper began, I wondered if the wall clock
mounted on the middle panel of the backdrop
was ticking away; no it was still, permanently
stuck at ten to two. Quite right, since
this play was in no way attempting to be a
slice of real life in real time. It was a marvellous
fantasy from Alan Bennett who evidently
has an equal penchant for the erudite
and the smutty, such dual interests exhibiting
themselves in the ageing teacher Hector as
well as in some of his charges: Dakin relates
his seduction of the headmaster’s secretary
in terms of an analogy with World War One
military tactics. Fervent discussion of poetry,
war and war poetry provided the rich filling
whilst sex, either carried out or just fantasised
about, served as the containing slices of
this sandwich.
There is a poignant moment when Hector,
sensing the loneliness of the boy with whom
he is having a one-to-one tutorial, expounds
the joy of literature: “discovering someone
long dead had the same feelings as you, a
hand reaching out to grasp yours”.
This production compares well with the
original I saw five years ago at the National
Theatre. The Hector as played by Alisdair
Hinton here was a more dour, troubled soul
than the original played by the charismatic
Richard Griffiths. But that was to the good,
since Richard Griffiths’ compelling charmer
tended to overbalance that production; here
with Hector as more of a lonely outsider, the
focus falls more on the boys themselves.
All the actors playing the pupils managed a
plausible northern accent and deftly managed
to capture the difference in speech register
when talking to each other as opposed
to addressing the teacher.
If the actors playing the boys were uniformly
impressive, those playing the staff
were decidedly more mixed. I couldn’t quite
decide whether Alisdair Hinton was uncomfortable
in the part of Hector or he was a
genius at portraying Hector as being uncomfortable
in his role as a teacher – I’ll give him
the benefit of the doubt. Sophie Foulds as
the only female staff member, Mrs Lintott,
gave her abrasive views in a suitably abrasive
Yorkshire accent. As the more genteel and
younger southerner, Ben Lawson as Mr Irwin
gave an impressively understated performance.
In contrast, Dean Elliot overplayed his
part as the Headmaster: a collection of facial
tics and absurd speech mannerisms more
suited to a Ray Cooney farce; still he did
manage to carry off the pivotal scene where
Hector is brought to book for his grave misdemeanour
with suitable exasperation.
My only quibble is with the structure: the
long series of short scenes, most of them of
the same classroom scene, militated somewhat
against the building of tension. Though
a more major cavil is the ending. You can
imagine the playwright here thinking ‘Um,
how shall I end this? – oh, I know, why not
employ that old standby – the road accident.’
As a result, the closing scene, in which a now
wheel-chair bound Mr Irwin has apparently
adjusted to his restricted circumstances,
seemed a tad glib in that a whole new theme:
‘how do you adjust to severe disability?’ is
introduced at the last moment but necessarily
remains unexplored.
Still, overall this play was a fantastic tourde-force,
seamlessly melding high intellectual
debate with characters’ very personal
foibles, and I doubt even a seasoned professional
troupe of actors could have realised its
themes with any greater dexterity than did
this production.