NEW YORK, N.Y —It was no fluke that The History Boys won a Tony for being the best play currently on Broadway.  It’s a gripping tale, funny, poignant, and imaginatively presented.  What’s more, it demonstrates ensemble acting at its very best.  Frankly, it blew me away!

 

 The play revolves around eight British high school graduates who have returned for an additional semester’s study to prepare for their college entrance exams.  All exceedingly bright, they plan to major in history and are being coached in that subject by a hugely obese and intensely jovial professor whom they have nicknamed Hector (Richard Griffiths in the role that won him the Tony for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play).

 

Hector specializes in general studies, which he deems “useless knowledge from the Department of Why Bother?”  He also specializes in mild pedophilia, consistently feeling up his students as they ride on the back of his motorcycle.  But he is a hilariously imaginative teacher, allowing the boys to role-play a prostitute and her clients, providing they play their parts entirely in French!  Which they do, to the delight of the audience, who can easily follow their actions and intentions.

 

Hector’s compatriots on the staff are Frances de la Tour, who won a Tony for Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Play, and the flinty Headmaster, Clive Merrison, who didn’t win a Tony but should have.  Also nominated for a Tony was Samuel Barnett, who plays Posner, a young man who is not only Jewish, but gay!  (How handicapped can you be among WASPy English schoolboys.

Rounding out the teaching ensemble is Irwin (Stephen Campbell Moore), who brings a no-nonsense rigor to the proceedings.  It is his contention that to make a significant mark with the test-graders at Cambridge and Oxford the history boys will have to “make history entertainment.”  He coaches them in being “perverse in answering”--- making their points by using unexpected arguments and mischievous metaphors.  “Arguing for effect,” as he terms it. 

Among the students, the undercurrent of homosexuality associated with English boys’ schools is subtly personified by Dakin, a dark, brooding young man played by Dominic Cooper, who is Posner’s fantasy love object and, subliminally, the teacher Irwin’s as well.

 

 In this exquisitely written play by Alan Bennett, the one-time ensemble comic of Beyond the Fringe, each of the teachers has a single motif that largely defines his character.  For Hector, it is his all-consuming desire to be a teacher that his pupils will remember.  For the starchy Mrs. Linton (the excellent Frances de la Tour) it is her sardonic comment to one of the boys, “You’re young, of course.  I never had that advantage.”  And for Irwin, riding around in a wheelchair, it is the conviction that “Disability brings the assumption of sincerity”---another example of his emphasis on perversity.

 

Nicholas Hytner, who won a well-deserved Tony for directing this masterful play, has mounted it among some stunning accoutrements.  With the help of Scenic Designer Bob Crowley (who won the Tony for his efforts) and Lighting Designer Mark Henderson (also a Tony winner for this play), Hytner has introduced grainy black and white film footage of the principals in their school environment, strolling the halls, fooling around, flirting with the Headmaster’s secretary.  It is a remarkably propitious tool and a marvelously felicitous use of film.  What’s more, it serves the purpose of filling in the blanks as the scenes change from the classroom to the teachers’ lounge and back.  Further, it marks the spectacular introduction of Hector, who zooms in onscreen on his motorcycle and then emerges onstage removing his helmet.

 

In the long run, however, “The History Boys” is a predictable exposition of traditional English schoolboy plays, and we have seen it all before.  But maybe its familiarity is what makes it so enjoyable.  And its humor and brilliant ensemble acting is what makes it seem suddenly fresh and extraordinary.  In any case, it’s a school production that’s well worth attending.  And even flying to New York to see!