1986 And All That

Went to see Alan Bennett's The History Boys last night. I'll preface the rant by saying that I am a fan of most of his work, all the way back to Beyond the Fringe and "Is there a little bit in your life?" - a sketch my parents used to quote at every opportunity. The Madness of King George III? Great. A Question of Attribution? Excellent, subtle, gripping. Talking Heads? Triumphant uses of the monologue form. The History Boys? Bobbins.

I mean it, absolute and utter bobbins. Superbly acted bobbins - I can't think of a duff performance by a single cast member, whereas I can think of plenty of excellent ones - but bobbins nonetheless. From the moment you meet the two teachers vying for their pupils' souls - one a cynical historian who wants his charges to abandon the truth in their quest for Oxbridge (and who will become first a wheelchair-bound TV historian and then (oh surely not this cliche again) a New Labour MP), the other a genial, motorcycling pederast who uses General Studies classes to fill the boys' heads with Gracie Fields, the films of the 1950's and re-enactments in French of visits to Parisian brothels - you have the thesis of the piece and its ultimate resolution laid out before you. I am still trying to work out whether the thesis is trite or simply banal, but I know that the resolution (*spoiler alert* the offstage motorbike crash which kills our hero and leaves our villain crippled) was about as satisfying as having a Greek God winched onto the stage to resolve the conflict.

Then there are the specifics. Having gone through the state education system in the 1980's and wound up at Oxford, I was saddened by Bennett's attempted evocation of an Eighties' grammar school. The idea that there would be one teacher, let alone two or three, hungering to fill the pupils' heads with great, or at the least brilliant-sounding, thoughts in a school bearing any resemblance to the reality of those I and my peers went to is balls. And as for the pupils, in Bennettland they may swear occasionally but they also spend their time flitting between English and French, playing 40's favourites on the piano, singing hymns and quoting at length from poets like Houseman and Elliott (we're back to 40's and 50's favourites again). What I suspect Bennett has evoked is his own Grammar School. Bennett also makes one of the lead pupils almost openly gay. Nothing wrong with that, but then he makes the other boys treat him with the sort of easygoing understanding that you'd hope to find in a Hampstead Dinner Party but you'd never find among a group of schoolboys in Thatcher's Britain. Show a schoolchild someone with red hair or buck teeth and they'll soon form a pack baying for the kill, give them someone who's gay and it's The Lord of the Flies all over again.

Moving on. Frances De La Tour's character is nothing more than a Greek chorus in female form. This is something Bennett recognises, giving her a brief "I have not yet been granted an inner voice" address direct to the audience. He then seeks to make amends by giving her a lengthy (and amusing, this is Alan Bennett after all) speech about history as the teaching of centuries of masculine ineptitude, a speech which flows from the surrounding action as smooth and swift as a brick superglued to the floor.

A similar trick is attempted with the character of Rudge (the thick son of a former Cambridge scout (ie cleaner)). He is patronised freely by all the characters. and the author, throughout. Bennett seeks to get round this by giving him a single line at the plays end saying how he "refuses to be patronised", he's "had that all [his] life".

Then there are all the other questions. Why does Bennett fail to explore one boy's deep interest in religion beyond using it to give him the role of (another) Greek chorus? Why does the boy who, we are told, absorbed our hero's lessons most deeply, become (*further spoilers ahead*) a sad and lonely figure, living alone in a cottage and pretending to be a woman in internet chat rooms? Not to mention a thousand pettyfogging questions like what are league tables doing in the 1980's?

So that's the rant. The acting really is superb. The set is good. There are some very good lines, even some very good speeches. It's still bobbins though.