The History Boys

The History Boys
Play by Alan Bennett
Directed by: Scott Edmiston
Set, Janie E. Howland. Costumes, Gail Astrid Buckley. Lights, Karen Perlow. Music and sound, Dewey Dellay.
Presented by: SpeakEasy Stage Company.
At: Boston Center for the Arts, Roberts Studio Theatre, through June 22.
Tickets, $51-54, 617-933-8600, bostontheatrescene.com

We’re living in a roiling sea of interests competing for our time and allegiance. What will help us get on in life, a deep understanding of our cultural history or the ability to reduce it to superficial sound bytes?

The question is posed, and not necessarily answered, by a rambunctious and touching SpeakEasy Stage production of ‘The History Boys,’ recently extended till June 22, at the Roberts Studio Theater in the Calderwood Pavilion.

The story unfolds in a working class boys’ school in 1984 Sheffield England. An eccentric professor, Hector, played by Bob Colonna, is a gray-bearded Socrates in a tweed jacket. "All knowledge is precious whether or not it serves the slightest human use," he says. The scenes of him careening between poetry, popular song, and exuberant skits to tease out lessons in history and culture to his class of eight students are filled with intelligence and a jaunty Python-esque imagination.

Tom Irwin, a young professor, is hired by the fatuous headmaster to improve the boys’ chances of being accepted at famed Oxford and Cambridge colleges. Irwin, played by Chris Thorn, encourages the boys to build their college entrance exams with froth and the reason of a sophist. They’ve been taught to write with a stone mason’s skill, laying foundation and layering point after point, “Booooring”, says Irwin.

"History nowadays is not a matter of conviction," he says. "It’s a performance." He encourages them to find the Fox News versions of their essays and abandon their training to search for historical perspective.

The eight boys are the stuff of the melting pot that is working class England. The dialogue between them underscores their wavering loyalties as they decide which of their teachers represents their best way to succeed. Dan Whelton as alpha male Dakin and Karl Baker Olson as sensitive gay student Posner are standouts. Olson’s singing of “Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered” and recitation of Thomas Hardy’s "Drummer Hodge” are unabashed expressions of unrequited love for another student.

Bennett’s main characters are complex and flawed. Hector’s habit of groping the boys he takes on motorcycle rides is certainly inappropriate. To his students, his behavior is a joke but there are consequences. Irwin misrepresents his credentials. Let’s just say the ending is not tidy.

Director Scott Edmiston and sound designer Dewey Dellay pull out the stops and use music, singing and lively dance routines that look choreographed for jolly soccer players as transitions between scenes.

History has not been crowded out of prime time in the British public education system, at least not in the 1984 England we see here. When is the last time your play program included two pages filled with over two dozen literary, historical, and pop culture references that will appear in the play? When is the last time you heard the names of Gracie Fields and Piero della Francesca (via T.S. Eliot) bandied about in any kind of play? No matter which way these boys write their exams, Hector’s made sure they know their history.

And I’ll bet my laptop that several references to the Dissolution of Monasteries, the destruction of 800 monastic libraries in the mid-1500s that represented a cultural and educational loss, is an echo of what playwright Alan Bennett wonders about in today’s era in which ‘history’ seems to mean last week.

We’re living in a sea of change. So many of our traditions, ways of thinking and living are becoming artifacts of history, replaced by fresh ideas, concepts, and market forces. But is newer better? The History Boys aren’t the only ones who have to decide. We have to do it every day.

Comments

[Chris McArdle]

Paul - what I want most from a book, a movie, a play, an exhibition is something different - that makes me see things in a new way. Your review does just that. I loved the movie of the History Boys but your review brought out so much more. Now I'll have to see the play. This will be one of my favorite blogs of yours.
Chris