REVIEW: The History Boys at The Students’ Union
By Aisha Farr
Monday 2nd November 2009
Monday 2nd November 2009
St. Andrews has a very long tradition of not being Oxbridge. It also has a long tradition of theatrical productions that go far beyond competence. The recent reprisal of the sell-out On-The-Rocks production of The History Boys might be branded only ‘competent’, were it not for the brilliantly boyish yet self-consciously serious cast and their collective performance.
The production, a strong mimic of the original National Theatre’s take, failed in its minimal set’s attempt at conjuring a ‘dreary comprehensive in the suburbs somewhere’, because it just didn’t have the pitch-perfect props to pull it off. A new visual take on the set would have been more interesting, and surely not difficult to come up with.
However, despite this piece of professorial nitpicking, the performance itself - most importantly - brought the lively, humorous and ultimately touching script across. With most of the audience fresh out of secondary school, or fresh in to the teaching arena again (- plenty of young postgraduates and professors were there - and therefore were most likely fresh out of Oxbridge) the play was well chosen for a university forum, as the collective laughs and soft nods proved. Posner, played so well by Andrew Mackley, with his wide-eyed love for learning and his emotionally lovelorn sensibilities, that become inseparable from everything he is taught as school, brings forward the echoing truth of how ephemeral youth is. Remember university students, what Hector the romantic teacher recites: ‘Never such innocence,/ Never before or since,/ As change itself to past/ Without a word.’ Luckily, while we are all still young(ish), we can still enjoy some A-grade theatre. St.Andrian productions, unlike History, are certainly not ‘one fucking thing after another.’
The production, a strong mimic of the original National Theatre’s take, failed in its minimal set’s attempt at conjuring a ‘dreary comprehensive in the suburbs somewhere’, because it just didn’t have the pitch-perfect props to pull it off. A new visual take on the set would have been more interesting, and surely not difficult to come up with.
However, despite this piece of professorial nitpicking, the performance itself - most importantly - brought the lively, humorous and ultimately touching script across. With most of the audience fresh out of secondary school, or fresh in to the teaching arena again (- plenty of young postgraduates and professors were there - and therefore were most likely fresh out of Oxbridge) the play was well chosen for a university forum, as the collective laughs and soft nods proved. Posner, played so well by Andrew Mackley, with his wide-eyed love for learning and his emotionally lovelorn sensibilities, that become inseparable from everything he is taught as school, brings forward the echoing truth of how ephemeral youth is. Remember university students, what Hector the romantic teacher recites: ‘Never such innocence,/ Never before or since,/ As change itself to past/ Without a word.’ Luckily, while we are all still young(ish), we can still enjoy some A-grade theatre. St.Andrian productions, unlike History, are certainly not ‘one fucking thing after another.’