In May 2004 The History Boys debuted at the National Theatre in London’s West End. The play was such a commercial and critical success--it won awards from renowned sources within the London theatre community--that the play was published in proper book format by the end of the year and brought to Broadway in 2006, where it won a Tony Award. Two years later, the film was released, with the original stage director Nicholas Hytner at its helm and with the original stage cast also on board.
I saw the play in the fall of 2004 at the National as part of a British Drama Studies class. It was by far the class' favorite, even more so than the Royal Shakespeare Company’s exquisite rendering of Hamlet. The class was supposed to read the play before going to see it, but all of the local bookstores were sold out of it…not a single copy was found by any member of the class. Having recently located it at my local library, I decided to do that now older assignment.
Oi. Alan Bennett's script as it is published has virtually no set design instruction or stage direction. All I can say is, if those actors and crewmembers had only that to work with, Bravo! I had trouble following the action of the play because of the lack of stage direction and assume that I would have been doubly lost had I not seen the play and the film by that time. Also, the scene that takes place entirely in French in the film and is not translated is similarly not translated in the play, and there are, as per usual, virtually no stage directions to help you along. So, if you don’t parle francais, you will be quite lost as to what is happening in that scene.
