What is the purpose of education? To inspire students, to open up their minds to culture and ideas? Or is it to embed facts and useful knowledge into their heads so they can get ahead in the world — in a good college or job?
Alan Bennett’s play “The History Boys” considers this question in a hugely enjoyable and thought-provoking fashion. A hit on both London’s West End and Broadway (a less crackling movie version came out in 2007) “The History Boys” gets the Joy Zinoman treatment at Studio Theatre in a fluid, stirring production that emphasizes the social and political aspects of the play.
“The History Boys” can be seen as a metaphor — and genteel condemnation — of Thatcherite England. It also presents an affectionate, eccentric portrait of the kind of teacher one never forgets. In this respect, the drama may remind you of other halcyon school-days plays, such as “Dead Poets Society,” “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” or “Goodbye, Mr. Chips.”
The play follows eight adolescent boys at an undistinguished school in Northern England as they prepare for the Oxbridge Exam; entrance into the University of Oxford indisputably would change their lot in life. The school’s overbearing Headmaster (James Slaughter) hires a young teacher, Irwin (Simon Kendall), to give the students polish and an edge. He’s a one-man Kaplan Review, and his educational spin-doctoring clashes with the swoony, romantic teaching approach taken by the older Hector (Floyd King), who draws out his students with memorization of whole poems, Edith Piaf songs and classic movie scenes.
As much as the boys love Hector, Irwin’s inverting the truth for novelty’s sake proves seductive. Soon the students are debating the kinder side of the Holocaust and other incendiary viewpoints. In the end, however, what does Hector in is not a difference of aesthetics — it’s his pedophilia, of which his devoted students are amazingly tolerant.
Hector’s groping is not the main point of “The History Boys.” Rather, it presents a delicately tragic rendering of the rewards and pitfalls of the teaching life. Mr. King takes a more subdued, observant approach than the role’s originator, actor Richard Griffiths, and the subtlety works to create one emotional high after another. Mr. King is thrilling in the classroom, and when he guides a pupil through Thomas Hardy’s poem “Drummer Hodge,” it not only emphasizes the importance of memorizing poetry but also how great art can resound within you. In Hector’s case, though, the poem is a sad echo of his insufficient life.
Mr. King’s role is charismatic and bombastic, but Mr. Kendall is equally potent as Irwin, both reactive and insidious. Tana Hicken, playing a seasoned professor wearied by history, has a gorgeous moment when she gets her fill of testosterone and wryly condemns the past as “women following behind, holding the bucket.”
The octet of young actors portraying the students more than hold their own against the veterans, particularly Jay Sullivan as the manipulative golden boy Dakin; Ben Diskant’s contemplative Scripps, in the throes of a “romance with God”; Robert Rector’s not-so-dumb jock, Rudge; and Owen Scott’s wounded Posner, a tortured soul who most closely resembles the playwright.
***1/2
WHAT: “The History Boys” by Alan Bennett
WHERE: Studio Theatre, 1501 14th St. NW
WHEN: 8 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays, 2 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays, 7 p.m. Sundays. Through May 4.
TICKETS: $39 to $57
PHONE: 202/232-3300
WEB SITE: www.studiotheatre.org
MAXIMUM RATING: FOUR STARS
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