The History Boys - Stagetext (Belfast) November 1, 2006

The History Boys
National Theatre

Genre: Comedy
Playwright: Alan Bennett

‘A play that strikes me as one of the finest Bennett has ever written, packed with superb one-liners. A play of depth as well as dazzle, intensely moving as well as thought-provoking and funny.’ Daily Telegraph

The school gives them an education. I give them the wherewithal to resist it. Examine a boy and he is tamed already. Only examine him and you can tax him, empanel him, enlist him, interrogate him and put him in prison. You have only to grade him and you have got him.

An unruly bunch of bright, funny sixth-form boys in pursuit of sex, sport and a place at university. A maverick English teacher at odds with the young and shrewd supply teacher. A headmaster obsessed with results and a history teacher who thinks he’s a fool.

In Alan Bennett’s new play, staffroom rivalry and the anarchy of adolescence provoke insistent questions about history and how you teach it; about education and its purpose.