Groping toward enlightenment.The History Boys * Written by Alan Bennett * Directed by Nicholas Hytner * Broadhurst Theatre, New York City New York City: see New York, city. New York City City (pop., 2000: 8,008,278), southeastern New York, at the mouth of the Hudson River. The largest city in the U.S. (through September 3) The prestige hit play of the Broadway season, Alan Bennett's The History Boys is a funny, moving, and veddy, veddy British theatrical essay on contemporary education. Set in the mid 1980s, the play follows eight top graduates from a regional sixth form school as they prepare for entrance exams for Oxford and Cambridge. Their primary tutor, the Falstaffian Hector (Richard Griffiths), campaigns for a classical education, stuffing the lads' high-powered brains with poetry, music, literature, and French (when they're not taking turns receiving crotch-fondling rides on the professor's Harley). Fretting that freethinkers freethinkers, those who arrive at conclusions, particularly in questions of religion, by employing the rules of reason while rejecting supernatural authority or ecclesiastical tradition. won't impress Oxbridge, the status-conscious headmaster (Clive Merrison) brings in Irwin (Stephen Campbell Moore Stephen Campbell Moore (born Stephen Thorpe) is an English actor. Biography Career Moore trained at Guildhall and made his screen debut in Stephen Fry's Bright Young Things. He is primarily a stage actor, and has performed with the RSC. ) to provide more cold-blooded coaching on how to impress exam-givers. Dense and epigrammatic ep·i·gram·mat·ic also ep·i·gram·mat·i·cal adj. 1. Of or having the nature of an epigram. 2. Containing or given to the use of epigrams. , the play turns overly schematic at times, dictating the audience's responses in a way that Tom Stoppard or David Hare would disdain. But the impeccably staged production by out director Nicholas Hytner makes any melodramatic excesses forgivable, with the help of a superb ensemble cast and a snazzy snaz·zy adj. snaz·zi·er, snaz·zi·est Slang Fashionable or flashy. [Origin unknown.] snaz set designed by Bob Crowley. No British schoolboy drama is complete without some gay subplot, but here the gay material is especially nuanced, ambiguous, and even subversive. The one kid Hector doesn't touch, because he's younger and less developed, is Posner (a lovely performance by Samuel Barnett), the gay kid who most craves attention from older men. Without condoning Hector's lack of boundaries--as his friend and colleague Mrs. Lintott (played by the deliciously crusty Frances de la Tour Frances de la Tour (born 30 July 1944) is a Tony Award winning English actress.[1] Background Born in Bovingdon, Hertfordshire, de la Tour was educated at London's Lycée Français and the Drama Centre, (a college of the University of the Arts London). ) notes, "A grope is still a grope"--Bennett dares to suggest that there are some things more damaging to students than touching their pee-pees. The boys themselves certainly think so. "Are we scarred for life?" asks Dakin (handsome Dominic Cooper), the cynical cutie cut·ie also cut·ey n. pl. cut·ies also cut·eys Informal A cute person. whose fatal attractiveness becomes a major plot point. "Let's hope so," says Scripps (Jamie Parker), the aspiring priest. "Maybe it'll turn me into Proust." |
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