Alan Bennett's 'The History Boys' dazzles at Theatre Royal Plymouth with a mix of intellect and irreverence

I don't think I’ve ever heard so much swearing in the theatre before. And by the odd intake of breath I heard, I don’t think I was alone in noticing, as The History Boys opened at Theatre Royal Plymouth on Tuesday night.

But gritty realism and an intensity seem the hallmarks of a play which is now in its 20th year since first opening at the National Theatre.

Alan Bennett’s opus focuses on eight boys at a grammar school in Sheffield – high achievers who their self-interested headteacher (Milo Twomey) believes are capable of reaching Oxbridge.

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The boys’ intellect has been nurtured by larger-than-life tutor Mr Hector, played excellently on Tuesday by understudy Jolyon Young, who allows them to cavort and argue purportedly in the interests of academic furtherment.

But with their headteacher seeing the value of their achievement as a potential reflection of his leadership, he brings in young scholar Mr Irwin to make sure they excel in their exams for Oxford and Cambridge.

The difference in the teaching methods of Hector and Irwin – the absence of the use of ‘Mr’ highlights Bennett’s disdain for authority – is a chasm, and the boys are left learning how to learn for their new tutor.

The vigour and passion of their young lives flows through the script, which is classroom-based but avoids any sense of the torpor of its school setting and subject matter. Instead, the boys act out a visit to a French brothel under the guise of linguistic practice, behind Hector’s locked door.

When the headteacher walks in with Irwin, the brothel is suddenly a WWI military hospital and the boys plunge into a diorama of battlefield injuries. The story of their trials, efforts, young loves and emotions is mixed with the lives of their teachers, who have their own tribulations behind metaphorical locked doors of their own.

The way in which the boys are carefully trained towards earning a place at Oxbridge at seemingly any cost shows Bennett’s clear dislike of the establishment.

But the script has even more scorn to other career paths such as going into Government or the very worst: Journalism. The cast of boys are singularly excellent in their portrayal of the rites of education, from Lewis Cornay’s vulnerable Posner to Archie Christoph-Allen’s hubristic Dakin.

The play was turned into a film in 2006, and provided a role for the then little known actor James Corden, who played Timms. Here, Teddy Hinde delivers a performance which is every bit as good as his better-known predecessor.

Perhaps the worst of the language – in terms of swearing – is delivered by the only female character, teacher Mrs Lintott (Gillian Bevan), who issues these utterances so well that they are brilliant comic devices, and a break to the tension. A brilliant play, excellently performed.