The lessons of ‘History’

THIS month, Broadway will see a delightful “class reunion” of a remarkable stage cast that has stuck together for two years, performed in four countries, dipped into another medium and enjoyed unprecedented success. The original cast of Alan Bennett’s “The History Boys,” unquestionably the National Theatre’s most successful production in recent years, will make its bow at New York’s Broadhurst Theatre on April 23, marking the culmination of an extraordinary run.

The play focuses on two influential schoolteachers with wildly contrasting philosophies of education and eight smart, witty high school boys studying for exams that will allow them to enter one of England’s two leading seats of learning -- the “ancient universities” Oxford and Cambridge.

As an author and playwright, Bennett, 71, is held in huge public affection in Britain, so it was no surprise that “The History Boys” would be a hit. But few foresaw that the play would turn out to be such a phenomenon.

It even triggered a debate in Britain about the purpose of education in modern life. Is it simply a means of acquiring the right qualifications to become eligible for desirable jobs? Or is it something to savor and relish, with no need for further justification beyond the love of learning itself?

The two schoolmasters in “The History Boys” stand for these opposing attitudes. Irwin (Stephen Campbell Moore) is a young, media-savvy teacher who cynically urges his pupils to write essays with eye-catching, provocative views; in this way, he insists, they will receive marks for originality from their examiners. Unsurprisingly, Irwin later becomes a controversial presenter of history documentaries on TV.

But the beloved veteran English teacher Hector (Richard Griffiths) believes in culture and intellectual inquiry; he opposes Irwin and despises the school’s results-driven headmaster (Clive Merrison).

“Even in rehearsals, I didn’t realize it would be as popular as it proved,” says the National’s artistic director, Nicholas Hytner, who directs the play. “After I read it, I said: ‘It’s brilliant, but it’s quite esoteric.’ We scheduled 70 or 80 performances.” Yet it has been performed 281 times at the National, each time to a sellout audience. In recent weeks, “The History Boys” has toured triumphantly in Hong Kong, New Zealand and Australia before arriving on Broadway; there was no empty seat at any venue.

Last summer, after a break from performing the play at the National, Hytner and the cast came together to shoot a film, adapted by Bennett himself. They used two adjacent schools in Watford, a town some 20 miles northwest of London. The film, made on a modest budget of around $3.4 million, will be distributed by Fox Searchlight, though BBC Films contributed funds for British broadcast rights.

Clearly, the trick for the film is to replicate what makes “The History Boys” work on stage. That suggests pressure, but on one day in Watford last summer, the on-set mood was relaxed and jokey. The production had taken over one school’s main hall, and on its stage the History Boys were singing a tribute to Hector: a close-harmony version of “Bye Bye Blackbird.”

Seats in the hall were filled by extras playing staff, parents and pupils. Hytner padded around amiably as the camera tracked slowly, capturing the boys’ faces. In a corner, wearing his trademark expression, a blend of wistful hope and dawning disappointment, Bennett wrote on a notepad. Famously shy around the media, he kept his head down and his gaze averted.

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Schooled in adapting

WHEN the scene was completed, Hytner calmly said, “Cut,” and the hall dissolved into excited chatter. The eight actors (mostly in their 20s) playing the boys stood round a piano as one of them, Jamie Parker, improvised blues and jazz tunes. Extras playing younger students crowded around, peppering them with questions. Then Hytner, smiling broadly, strode through the hall like a pied piper, leading a trail of excitable boys to a monitor, where they watched a playback of the scene.

The mood was one of happy confidence among people who knew each other well; unusually for a play transferring from stage to screen, the entire cast has remained intact.

Hytner and Bennett have already been down this road. Bennett’s play “The Madness of George III,” directed by Hytner, also premiered at the National and became “The Madness of King George” on film in 1994. But this time, Hytner said, the adaptation process was quite different.

“We really opened up for the film of King George, but then the places where its characters lived and worked cried out to be opened up. The world of this story is the school, so the big decision we took was not to twist ourselves in knots trying to give it a false sense of scale.

“Closed worlds like schools, army bases, prisons or hospitals are fantastic, because they stand as a microcosm for a bigger world. You have a better chance of finding universal truths if you focus truthfully and from experience on a small corner of the world.”

Happily, this view coincides with the film’s modest budget. Producer Kevin Loader (“Captain Corelli’s Mandolin,” “Enduring Love”) began talking with Hytner about a “History Boys” film in February 2005. Time was of the essence; the cast, and the schools used, would be free only in summer.

“Alan was already adapting it for the screen,” said Loader. “So we worked out how to get this financed quickly without lots of tedious discussion. We decided to make it for as little money as possible.” He sealed financing in Cannes last May; the film was in production three weeks later.

But making the film at such a low budget involved unorthodox arrangements; costumes were borrowed from the National, and the film is effectively a National Theatre production. “The only way to do it this cheaply was to retain ownership,” as Loader puts it. Cast and major crew deferred large proportions of their payments, he added, “so ‘History Boys -- The Collective’ should get a share of money at the back end.”

Back in the hall, it was time for Merrison, playing the headmaster, to take the stage, paying tribute to his character’s sworn enemy, Hector, in florid language; his speech is full of money-obsessed references like “opening a deposit account in the bank of literature” and “shareholders in that wonderful world of words.”

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The star off stage

AFTERWARD, Merrison expressed delight at being retained in the play’s transition from stage to screen. He has no doubt why “The History Boys” has been such a hit: “The star of the play is there, but he isn’t on stage. Alan’s authorial voice is clear, and it comes through all the characters.”

Clearly, then, it was time to talk to the shy star. Bennett smiled nervously at a reporter’s approach. Some screenwriters avoid film sets, but he had come in often to rewrite a line quickly when needed.

“I’m here as much for social reasons as professional,” he said. “I could do it as well over the phone. But I was at the rehearsals throughout for the stage play, and it helps somehow. You get to know [the cast] and what they can do. You remember things they’ve done that they’ve forgotten, and you remind them about ways they did the lines earlier on. So it helps in that sense. Anyway, I tell myself so.”

He found “The History Boys” more intractable to adapt: “You need the classroom scenes, so you can’t open it out as you could ‘King George.’ Some of the dialogue has to be shot on the move, not statically as it would be on stage. I don’t have much notion of that, so I leave it to Nick.”

Yet Bennett made a major change from the play, which starts by stating the contrasting attitudes of Hector and Irwin. In his movie script, the boys take the audience into the story.

“If you told it the other way round in a film, it would seem like a tract,” said Bennett. “The message would be too much in the foreground. Its human stories, those are the ones you’re interested in. So the argument, as it were, is submerged, and that’s the way it should be, really. You’ve got to get the audience interested in the lives of the boys.”

He liked that this cast has been a unit for so long: “They can do long shots, three or four minutes together, because they know the work. You get to know their strengths, and they do themselves. They also take the piss out of each other all the time.”

As they did to him, apparently. The “boys” nicknamed him “A.B.,” and teasingly treated this Great Playwright as if they had no idea who he was, and didn’t care. “Oh, give it a rest, A.B.!” was a typical chorus, accompanied by much eye-rolling. Bennett, who hates being regarded as some lovable national treasure, apparently relished this indelicate treatment.

But for the record, he played along, sounding disapproving and a touch disappointed: “Ah, yes,” he sighed, “there’s no respect for the writer.”

There is an agreement that the film of “The History Boys” will not open until the end of the Broadway run -- which could extend to the end of September. Given how the play has been received everywhere else it has played, don’t expect to see the movie much before early October.