October 31st, 2005
I went to see The History Boys by Alan Bennett with my bro last Saturday, now I finally have some time to write about it.
When you go to the theatre you expect entertainment, but I think it’s true that you also expect to watch something clever, it doesn’t matter in what way, just clever. The History Boys is like clever wrapped up in an intellectual blanket sitting on a pillow of intrigue. I suppose that’s only to be expected given the play is about a class of Oxbridge candidates in an 80s boys grammar school.
The 80s feel is all there: while they moved various props between acts a big projection lit up the background of the stage with black and white clips from the film they produced with the same cast; Dire Straits and Madness were pumped through the speakers at the same time. I thought it was very effective, since you could watch the characters walking along the corridors on screen, then when the lights went up again you could see them open up the door all in synch.
The play was very realistic, the camaraderie was all there between the boys, and the homosexual and paedophilia themes were portrayed in no other light than in the context of the play. The way the characters interacted with the themes I thought would be exactly how they would interact with them in real life.
There was Hector the much loved English teacher, entirely against the establishment’s way of teaching, personified by the headmaster. Hector doesn’t share in the enthusiasm for the league tables and instead follows what he feels is a rounded education, albeit he also holds great contempt for general studies, so instead covers other things in his English lessons–like French. There ensues a good ten minutes of French dialogue, but even if you didn’t understand a word of it, the meaning and actions are very clear, they certainly brought roars of laughter from the crowd. When the head walked in with the new History teacher Irwin they quickly had to change the bordello into a battlefield. As the play progresses Hector is involved in scandal, as it is revealed that the rides home on his motorbike offered to students result in fifty-mile an hour fondling. The malice isn’t apparent to the boys, but is nevertheless still there. In that respect it is interesting, in newspapers where you hear about teacher / pupil sexual interest, but it is rarely told from the viewpoint of the pupil.
The new history teacher–”grow a moustache”–Irwin is a young radical who teaches history from the wrong end of the stick in the attempt to distinguish their applications to Oxbridge. For instance arguing that Halifax’s bad teeth were a major influence in the outcome of World War II, as if he had better teeth, the time he spent at the dentist might have been spent becoming Prime Minister instead of Churchill. Irwin was later put in a predicament about his own closet homosexuality as he witnesses what happened to Hector.
Reading that, it might seem that the play is overly staged, but all the feelings seem entirely organic, and don’t feel implausible at all–from a class full of boys what else would you expect other than conversation and actions rife with sexual innuendo? I know from first hand experience–wait–that sounds a bit dodgy–I mean I was in a same-sex Science class and there was a lot of the same rowdiness.
There’s really quite a lot to take away from the play, through circumstance you see that there’s more to learning than education, and exams aren’t everything. It also shows how worlds, especially those that are institutional, you believe in can come crashing down around you. It’s also interesting to observe the role of the sole woman in the play Mrs Lintott. She seemed to help as an anchor to put things into perspective. It’s interesting to see how the sexes fair being segregated, you’ll have to decide for yourself, personally I don’t agree with it–those science lessons were too noisy. If you felt disquiet about education systems before seeing The History Boys you’ll probably leave at least in the knowledge that you’re not the only one.
One of my favourite quotes remain:
I have never let schooling interfere with my education. –Mark Twain
December 3rd, 2005 at 7:23 pm
‘History Boys’ is well-acted and well-funded. This is all that is ‘well’ about it, and Matron’s themometer would not go amiss up the bums of some of the reviewers who gave it such fevered support.
As a play, it is a depressing caricature of public school life, a fantasist’s invention, with a soft focus on pederast behvaiour and easy-listening bons mots about history and education. In Bennett’s play, we revisit the scenic formulae of Monty Python and Footlight humour. This time, boys in hormonal flush are set up as his voice pieces, boned up with wit, oozing camaraderie to a wincing point, and trussed with cleverness. They are ultimately two-dimensional mouth-pieces (the gay one, the bright one, the horny one, the one from the wrong side of the streets and therefore slow, the black one, the Jewish one, the religious one– on and on). The class room is seen from the closeted worldview of Bennett’s north England living room, the dream world of his drab-coated England, which in this case has become a peep hole into the boy world that has no (and will have no)room for the soft-mannered, creative and sensitive child. The world of the History Boys is a world nothing like what I ever experienced in my 14 years teaching in a public school. History Boys is corrective or revisionist history. In it Bennett gets back at the ugly, crass, vulgar and bullying nation of public school lads, the jarring law of the jungle by making them re-enact Sentimental Journey and rollicking about in thigh-flashing scenes as they stumble about with French diction. Ashame he could not tickle our fancy with the French word for ‘anal’.
And how the National Theatre audience love to laugh at the failsafe treasure chest of gags, charicatures and boys acting camp. It is a Pantomime dressed up in school uniform and everyone laughs knowingly with the author for not challenging their expectations. The real ‘naked’ raw and potentially distressing issue of homosexuality in the public school environment, where rape, extortion and ostracism occur on a daily basis, is fluffed away in the winnie-the-pooh level of emotional engagement. Hector is a clown not a tragic figure. The boys are wisened jesters, not individuals. Bennett’s attempts at weighty discourse on materialistic vs. idealistic education is delivered with intelligence, but it comes across with all the pedantry and pomposity of a learned teacher eager to smooth over the egdes and complexities of the issues. Theatre entertainment and intelligent debate are incompatible: discuss luvvie.
Bennett is a skilful skit writer, and he is armed to the teeth with wit and sharp observation. He is not a profound or gifted playwright. This play screams of skill and accessibility; it locates passionate moments by spotlighting a boy reciting poetry next to a failed and failing teacher. But when words fail and silence takes over, it is not the sensational void of Chekhov; tawdry and manipulated, feels more like it– like an intellectual grope on an unsuspecting audience. The ghostly appearance of the school master enjoining ‘his boys’ to ‘pass it on’ is Spielbergian, if not Disney fashion, is meretricious. His assessment, in 2005, of Thatcherite educational policies is dated and unnervingly skewed. Oxbridge bashing is boring and predictable.
One hopes that when the band wagon of reviewers pipe down and find its next naked Emperor to serenade, this play will be resigned to that benchmark of history with engravings of missed opportunities. The subjunctive here however is Bennet as a national theatre treasure, and his intervention in its history is made more poignant by his public admission of his homosexuality in the recognition of his mortality. The hard lessons of life distil sometimes the pearls of great price in artists. This play, however, is essentially a eunuch play: lots of dramatic noise, Wilde-ian jewels, and no balls. Why Bennett is known best for ‘Talking Heads’ speaks volumes.
December 5th, 2005 at 8:31 pm
It’s a play, Zeb.
May 2nd, 2006 at 7:54 pm
[…] eotypes. Though so much for new ideas–the scene transitions were ripped straight off The History Boys. Perhaps I̵ […]