The History Boys

  The History Boys is a touted award-winning play about a British public school (our private school), the students who attend and are trying to get into Oxford, and their various teachers. The play was a smash hit in London and New York and will be on the West End soon. History Boys was also made into a much less successful movie. In fact, I wondered what all the fuss was all about. I disliked many of the characters, chief among which figured Hector, the inspirational freewheeling teacher who diddled with his students as they hitched a ride on his motorbike.

     Now Hector says he merely performed a “laying on of hands” but in the movie the way the boys cringed, and Hector leered, the whole thing become, for me, unpalatable. I thought, “What is wrong with these Brits and New Yorkers that they so lauded this play”. The production at the Los Angeles Ahmanson Theatre changed my mind.

     Perhaps the director, Paul Miller who also directed the English tour, has softened the edges. While the production lacked some of the ole English bite, what we got was a more deeply felt rendition of the play, The production is flawed and I didn’t care much for the one note performance of one of the leads, Peter Paige of “Queer as Folk” (the American version.. He acted guilty from the beginning and his “secret’ became obvious.

     There are wonderful portrayals in the LA version. Dakin Matthews is superb as Hector and really breaks your heart when he falls apart after his teaching schedule is shortened and he is asked to resign at the end of term. I think the fact that the students took his touchy- feely bike rides as a joke, helped our accepting Hector. They love Hector as a teacher. His method of Teaching is wide open, exploring what comes up and trying to broaden the student’s horizons by introducing them to the sheer fun of American film and musical comedy.

   In direct opposition to this teaching style is the method of the new teacher (Peter Paige} who insists that students be controversial just for the sake of being provocative so they can get into Oxford. Well, they all get into Oxford but who is to say why; that is left up to the observer.

     Matthews get superb support from Charlotte Cornwell as the sympathetic Mrs. Lintott, and the uptight Headmaster of H. Richard Green. She is British and brought some much need authenticity to the proceedings.  The students were all quit good but the real standout was Alex Brightman as the Jewish sexually confused Posner. In the film the character was a raging queen but here is a confused teen with a crush on the more popular and athletic Dakin, well played by Seth Numrich. Brightman’s performance of the song “Bewitched” was enchanting. 

     The History Boys is a fascinating play with a very good cast. The writer Alan Bennett has give us a study of what our education system is all about or should be about. He teaches us the value of teachers and authority to show us how to think. He challenges us to examine our own educational systems and remember fondly all our teachers and mentors who gave us the start in life. The History Boys is well worth the visit.

Ahmanson Theatre 135 N. Grand Los Angeles through Dec. 9 www.centertheatregroup.org/tickets/