The History Boys
by Alan Bennet

Alan Bennett's classic promises an emotional trip, says Matt Byrne

Dave Simms is out to make history. His company Mixed Salad Productions is preparing to present the biggest dramatic success in recent Broadway history, Alan Bennett's The History Boys.
Co-founder Sally Putnam will direct the comic drama, about eight bright young North Country history students facing one final university entrance exam to determine their future.

There are echoes of Dead Posts Society as the diverse bunch of boys explore sex and sport, pull constant pranks and chart an academic future.

"It conquered The West End, toured the world and won the most Tony Awards for any play for 50 years and was a hit film," Simms says.

"It's a once-in-a-generation play and now we're doing it here - it's very exciting. We have a fabulous cast, the boys are going a brilliant job with this very funny and observant script. There will be plenty of laughter and tears."

The show is set in an unfashionable boys' grammar school, where the eight history students must deal with a headmaster obsessed with results and out to impress the school governors.

The boys love their equally unfashionable history master, Hector. His unconventional approaches has given them a greater appreciation of life, but the headmaster wants to make sure the boys get into the best universities for the reputation of the school.

He brings in a younger teacher, a hired gun, to coach them on the finer points of passing exams.

But which is more important, being better young men or getting into the right university?

And Simms has an extra reason to be excited as he is also playing Hector.

"Hector is eccentric, he teaches them poetry and gives them the freedom to think for themselves," Simms says. "He's actually a really good teacher but he want them to have an education in life, too."

But he has his tragic flaws like the rest of them, the challenge has gone out of this job and, after teaching for so many years, how will history judge him?

Sunday Mail, 24 May 2009

Mixed Salad aims to add The History Boys to its triumphs

LITTERED with literary references, set in a school and boasting numerous Tony Awards, The History Boys combines all the ingredients for which Mixed Salad Productions' co-founder Sally Putnam could wish.
By day, theatre director Putnam also happens to be the principal of a small Adelaide Hills school.

"We've actually been trying to get the rights for the play since it first came out, so we've just emailed them and pestered the life out of them," she says.

The script by acclaimed British playwright Alan Bennett - of TV's Talking Heads fame - is peppered with quotations from other literature and popular culture. "It's funny and it's thought-provoking, but there isn't a wasted word, really," Putnam says. "It's a fabulous play."

Set in the north of England in the mid-1980s, The History Boys follows a year in the lives of eight students in their pursuit of sex, sport and a place at university.

It was adapted into a hit film in 2006, featuring the cast of the original 2004 Royal National Theatre production.

Mixed Salad's past triumphs, in such shows as Love! Valour! Compassion! and Rabbit Hole, has enabled it to cast its own top ensemble of young South Australian actors as the likely lads.

Alastair Collins stars as Lockwood, Ben Brooker as Scripps, Ben Kuerschner as Posner, Brendan Blue as Dakin, Joshua Penley as Timms, Liam Grant as Crowther, Paul Briske as Akthar and Todd Clappis as Rudge.

"The number of people who want to audition for us has grown and grown and grown. I think I could have cast the boys about three times over," Putnam says.

In the end, she chose actors who were slightly older than the schoolboy characters, because of the short time in which the play had to be staged and also because of some of the more adult themes and language in the script.

"Because the content is very dense, they have to really understand what they're doing," Putnam says.

Putnam's own education interests are evident on the company's website, mixedsalad.com.au, which exhaustively details all the cultural quotations and references contained in the script, from works by poet A.E. Housman, Shakespeare and even the Bible's Deuteronomy, to snippets of songs by Rodgers and Hart, the Pet Shop Boys and 1942 film Now, Voyager.

"Hector, the teacher around whom the controversy lies, is always quoting and gives the boys this wide, fabulous understanding of literature," she says.

Putnam says The History Boys also explores three different types of teacher, from the very factual and precise Dorothy Lintott (played by Lindy Le Cornu) through the passionate and inspirational Douglas Hector (Dave Simms) to newcomer Tom Irwin (Lee Cook), who encourages the boys to argue and turn a point on its head.

"Then you have the headmaster, who basically doesn't care so long as his school goes up the league ladder," Putnam says. "It's also about young men, or any young people going into adulthood, and the choices that they make. Sometimes they can be inspired by what they've learned and other times they can be turned off."

Patrick McDonald, The Advertiser, 20 May 2009

Given the options it had with productions in the West End and on Broadway, Alan Bennett's The History Boys again merits a long run.

It's first Adelaide performances were sell-out and audiences will have to be swift to get in on the two-week season.

The response of the opening night audience could only be described as "relish''. It is the sort of intense and interesting, beautifully-paced and intelligent comedy that, well-performed, has one lost in time and on the edge of one's seat.

Mixed Salad Production's director, Sally Putnam has creamed off some of the city's finest young male performers as the eight students preparing for their Oxbridge entrance exam and four top players as their teachers.

If David Simms never plays another role, he can rest on the laurels of his portrayal of the adored, inspiring and idiosyncratic teacher, Hector.

From his wonderful entrance to the room of desks and chairs occupied by swaggeringly smart adolescent boys, a cloistering sense of being right there in the school room is established and the audience feels like an extra student.

Moving of chairs and tables to change classes or scenes is a constant chore shared among characters but, incorporated into the action, it has a natural flow.

Lee Cook conveys the contract teacher, Irwin, with finely honed intensity. Peter Smith captures the swanning arrogance of the mediocre headmaster while Lindy Le Cornu comes into her own with the superb eulogy which wraps up the play.

Todd Clappis is sleekly smug as top boy, Daikin and Ben Kuerschner touches the heart as the troubled gay boy, Posner. Ben Brookner has sauve simpatico as Scripps and Joshua Penley is a body language joy of defiant impishness.

Alastair Collins, Paul Briske, Jack Lukac and Liam Grant complete a superbly credible class of boys and one becomes attached to them all. It's a champion production.

Samela Harris, The Advertiser, 10 June 2009

‘The History Boys’ is Alan Bennett’s hugely successful play, and, since it opened in 2004, it has won a swag of awards on both sides of the Atlantic.

Taking on a show of such notoriety and acclaim as this means having to set the bar extremely high – but this excellent production clears it with ease.

In an unspecified school in England’s north in the mid-1980s, unconventional English master Hector inspires his eight star pupils to love language and poetry; however, results-focused headmaster Armstrong – keen for his school’s reputation to benefit from the boys ‘going up’ to an Oxbridge college – recruits younger, more practical History teacher Irwin to help them pass their examinations.

Under Sally Putnam’s expert guidance, the talented and well-drilled ensemble cast do an amazing job with Bennett’s demanding script, dotted as it is with numerous poetry stanzas and quotations, songs and even a section almost entirely in French. The comic and the dramatic moments are both handled well without any lapses into mawkishness, melodrama or milking of cheap laughs.

While all perform well, the standouts are Todd Clappis as Dakin, brimming with the arrogance of popularity; Lee Cook as the ambitious and intriguing Irwin; and Dave Simms showing great range as the likeable but flawed eccentric, Hector.

Lindy LeCornu as teacher ‘Tottie’ Lintott mixes a world-weary outlook with genuine depth, and an academic-gowned Pete Smith is officious and odious as the ambitious Headmaster Armstrong. And while the remaining students - Paul Briske, Jack Lukac, Alastair Collins, Ben Kuerschner, Liam Grant, Ben Brooker and Joshua Penley - have fewer lines, that does not for a moment diminish the energy, enthusiasm and presence. There are neither small parts nor small actors in this cast.

The set is simple as the space demands; to differentiate between locations the cast are often moving tables and chairs around. And, while The Studio puts the cast and the audience in close proximity, there were a few moments where some more vocal projection was needed.

Lighting is simple but effective, and is used both for functionality and impact. The sound mix – particular the piano-playing scenes - is spot on, as is the timing the recorded songs used.

‘The History Boys’ is, as director Sally Putnam notes, ‘about many things: Education, growing up, relationships, sexuality, love, loneliness, truth and lies.’ She could not be more correct. This is an outstanding production and one not to be missed.

Jamie Wright, Adelaide Theatre Guide, 8 June 2009

I saw Mixed Salad Productions’ version of Alan Bennett’s The History Boys at The Studio of Holden Street Theatres last Saturday and I was overwhelmed by the experience.

Everything – from the setting, Sally Putnam’s direction and all the performances – came together to a most satisfying evening of theatrical story telling. I find myself in grave danger of gushing so I’m going to cheat.

On the back of the program is the company’s mission statement: “Entertain, inform, include, impress and enthrall.” My review of the play could then be a resounding, “Yes!” but that’s not very informative. So please indulge me a little.

Since opening on the 18th of May 2004 The History Boys has captivated its audiences. It tells the story of a cramming period in a boys’ grammar school in the north of England in the 1980s where a small, select group is being prepared for their Oxbridge entry exams. The headmaster is determined that the boys should succeed and he brings in a cramming expert to supplement the work of the usual teachers. This introduces tensions and clashes that drive the roller coaster action enabling Bennett to give his views on education and learning and involve the audience in the lives that form the microcosm under scrutiny. Bennett’s writing skills ensure that our involvement is total so that we ignore his bending of some of the rules of drama.

The amateur rights to The History Boys have only been available since early this year and this version at Holden Street, only the third amateur production in the world, has a lot going for it. The stage has been transformed into a classroom enabling quick, unobtrusive changes to the many locales that the play requires without lowering the dramatic tension.

Putnam’s direction drives the play firmly and she has cast the play very well indeed. Each character is a type as well as a person and all the actors take up the challenge to give us people that we may love or hate but whose actions we always understand.

Peter Smith as the Headmaster is driven, pompous and exasperating with occasional human glimpses behind the facade. Lindy Le Cornu is good as the regular history teacher Lintott who wishes sometimes that she did not present history as a collection of facts and almost envies the crammer’s flamboyance.

Dave Simms is Hector, a teacher on the verge of retiring, who has found that students, like juries, remember best the things that they are told to disregard. His lessons seem to be disorganised mayhem but it is clear throughout the play that his students learn a lot and even play up to Hector’s unfortunate liking for fondling male genitals. Lee Cook as Irwin, the crammer, manages to show the character’s orthodoxy despite his seemingly iconoclastic approach to history.

And then there are the students who are a sort of hive protagonist of The History Boys. Each is an individual character who brings some personal baggage into the classroom. Here Bennett again shows his skill in giving so much in his writing yet allowing the actors room to leave the clichés behind. Paul Briske is clearly Akthar of Muslim background and while Jack Lukac’s Crowther is not black he is very much his own man. Alastair Collins’ Lockwood is an impish presence as a student and a business-like TV floor manager; Liam Grant is a nicely self-deprecating Rudge the sportsman.

I have left three of the pupils to the last because they are both more pivotal and also because their characters are more complex and better delineated. Ben Brooker is very much the solid, religious Scripps who is very much the best adjusted personality; Todd Clappis brings the right kind of rakishness to Dakin, the class Lothario whose clear success with women doesn’t prevent his trying it on with men. Ben Kuerschner is the youngest student Posner, who is a late child of Jewish parents, fiercely bright and consciously gay. It would have been easy for Kuerschner to fall into a stereotype but we get a finely nuanced mature performance. Kuerschner has clearly taken on board Bennett’s statement that ‘clichés can be quite fun’ but he also knows that they have to be kept strictly under control.

Now that you see what I meant about prolixity and praise I hope that you won’t be put off. Do go and see The History Boys at the Holden Street Theatres. It will be the best three hours you’ve spent at the theatre and they will pass just too quickly.

Myk Mykyta, Radio Adelaide, 8 June 2009

Alan Bennett's acclaimed drama The History Boys is a lesson in life.

Sally Putnam has assembled a stellar cast to tell the story of a bunch of bright North Country grammar students, facing one final test to get into university.

Bennett's devastatingly funny, sad and accurate dialogue captures the dilemma of a school wanting to build its academic reputation by getting more boys to Oxford and Cambridge.

The class has been given a poetic, rounded grounding in life by their eccentric English teacher Hector (superb Dave Simms). Lindy Le Cornu does a marvellous job as history teacher Mrs Lintott who has drummed the facts into their often irreverent heads.

But their strong-arm headmaster Armstrong (delightfully gruff Peter Smith) decides to bring in exam-savvy tutor Irwin to challenge Hector's erratic style. Lee Cook makes a welcome return to the stage as the ambitious but insecure Irwin, whose job is to catch the examiners' eye by treasuring trivia and trashing the truth. Todd Clappis is exceptional as the opportunistic class adonis Dakin, in a performance that should propel him towards a professional career.

There are tremendous performances from Ben Brooker as the frustrated Scripps, Alastair Collins as the sturdy Lockwood and Ben Kuerschner excels as petite Posner. Joshua Penley gets good laughs as the titillating Timms, Liam Grant makes a rough-and-ready Rudge.

Matt Byrne, Sunday Mail, 7 June 2009