[NEohioPAL] The History Boys - at the Beck - Review

[marcus at designerglass.com]

The History Boys
By Alan Bennet
Directed by Sarah May

The Beck Center for the Arts
17801 Detroit Avenue
Lakewood, Ohio 44107
216/521-2540

March 7 - 30, 2008

Tickets $19 - $28

Dana Hart seizes the part of Hector, an iconoclastic teacher at a boys´ school, 
and 
doesn´t let go. In the central scene of the play, for example, a one-on-one 
tutoring session with one of the boys about a poem by Hardy, "Drummer 
Hodge", Hart shows his terrifically empathetic insight into the essence of the 
student-teacher relationship. His character, Hector, has just been fired by the 
headmaster for impropriety, and the conflict between Hector´s personal grief 
and Hector´s impassioned belief in teaching plays out across Hart´s face and 
through his body language as Hector engages the student in a discussion of 
the poem. This is the scene that has to be magnificently acted for the whole 
play to be meaningful, and Hart makes it seem easy.

Dan Folino as Irwin is equally persuasive as the tempted teacher. His scene 
with a student who has found out Irwin´s secrets is impressive. Folino again 
employs the technique of seeming to separate the lower half of his body from 
the upper half in portraying a character with a deep-rooted conflict, as he did 
as Jekyll/Hyde. Folino´s Irwin is as uncomfortable in in his walk as he is 
master of the classroom standing or seated; it is evident in the comfortable 
ease of his posture while teaching. Folino does a really good job of playing 
conflict in this young teacher, which contrasts richly with Hart´s demonstration 
of Hector´s casual familiarity with the boys - a familiarity that is finally what 
gets Hector in trouble.

The boys themselves, led by Eric Fancher´s Dakin and Matthew Martin 
Thomas´s Posner, present a series of teaching and personal challenges to 
Hector and Irwin. The central issue is the conflict between two of the three 
kinds of love the Greeks identified: philos and eros (the third, agape, really 
doesn´t enter into this play). Hector and Irwin are both caught, in different 
ways, by their confusion of the two. Hector claims at one point that the 
teaching process is itself an erotic act, and Dede Klein, as the history teacher 
Mrs Lintott, in a brilliant piece of acting timing, destroys that illusion, one 
hopes, once and for all. Teaching is a kind of love, of course, a reciprocal love 
for and of knowledge - and the great danger of the teaching profession is the 
confusion of love of knowledge, philos, with physical love of another person, 
eros.  This is the center of the play: the danger of that confusion.

The boys, again. Effectively played by Tom Kondilas, Javar La´Trail Parker, 
Mack Shirilla, Stuart Hoffman, Adam Day Howard, and Max Chernin, along 
with Eric Fancher and Matthew Martin Thomas, they are the foils for the 
teaching dilemma that Hector and Irwin face. Director Sarah May gets them to 
play crisply and loudly as the smartest of the smart boys, stepping on one 
anothers´ lines and presenting all the charming pugnacity of kids who have it 
all before them. May does a good job of organizing them into a sort of Greek 
chorus commenting on the problems of their teachers. 

In the film, the boys were the stars, acted on in various ways by the teachers; 
but in the play, the teachers are the main characters, and the boys are, as 
students always are, part of the long passing line of names and faces. May 
has emphasized that aspect of the boys, and it works well. 

Dede Klein plays Mrs Lintot, with brio. Her set piece about Woman´s Role In 
History is worth the price of admission. Klein has a small part, but her craft 
brings a small role to life - there is not a moment she´s on stage that you don´t 
believe she´s who she seems to be. 

Michael Regnier, as Felix Armstrong, the Headmaster, is entirely enjoyable as 
the kind of pompous ass that we all want to believe all Headmasters are - but 
Regnier has the class not to go too far. He´s fit his character right into the 
balance of the play. He´s just right.

Jeff Glover gives us his characteristic growl, especially as the long-suffering 
TV Director, and Aubrey-Kristen Fisher does not overplay the flounce as the 
headmaster´s assistant.

The set, by Trad A Burns, is excellent - the illusion that we´re moving into and 
out of corridors, classrooms, offices, and the teacher´s lounge is well done. 
The scene changes are quick and effective because of Burns´s design.

If you want to see a serious play, one with major educational issues, social 
significance, and emotional importance, but leavened with enough comedy 
and song, this is it. You´ll have a great time.

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