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If you were to knock a top five of the most successful British plays of the 21st century, there’s absolutely no doubt that 2004’s The History Boys would be in there. The great Alan Bennett’s late career smash about the disaffected students and staff of a Sheffield boys’ grammar school in the ‘80s was a mega hit, played four seasons at the National Theatre, two in the West End, one in Broadway, spawned a film and launched the careers of a whole generation of young male stars, from Sacha Dhawan to James Cordon.
It’s almost certainly the crowning achievement in the career of its director Nicholas Hytner, and the emblematic achievement of his artistic directorship of the National Theatre, widely seen as a both an renaissance and a commercial golden age for our flagship theatre.
And now The History Boys is coming back! It’s not quite as simple as a straight-up revival of the original production, as while Hytner is directing again and Bob Crowley is designing, the rest of the creative team is liable to be new and the whole thing is being explicitly billed as a ‘reworking’. Don’t expect it to be radically different as to some extent this is just the nature of theatre: you can’t just pop an old show on after 20 years with no changes (the recent revival of War Horse is probably a good comparison).
Nonetheless, you do have to wonder whether some of the play’s more controversial aspects will feel magnified in 2027, especially the very morally ambiguous behaviour of ‘inspiring’ history teacher Hector, originally played by the late Richard Griffiths to multi award-winning effect. Ultimately, any changes seem unlikely to address this as you’d be altering the DNA of the play.
More exciting is the question of who might star in it: the OG production launched countless (well, about nine) stars of the future, plus really juicy roles for Griffiths and Frances de la Tour as Hector’s colleague Mrs Lintott. There’s no indication of the new cast at all yet, but expect a couple of heavyweights in the ‘adult’ roles plus a real spread of stars of tomorrow as the boys.
The History Boys is at Theatre Royal Haymarket, Apr 10-Jul 24 2027. Tickets go on sale at 9am on Fri Oct 23.
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