‘A play that strikes me as one of the finest Bennett has ever written, packed with superb one-liners. A play of depth as well as dazzle, intensely moving as well as thought-provoking and funny.‘ Daily Telegraph
An unruly bunch of bright, funny sixth-form boys in pursuit of sex, sport and a place at university. A maverick English teacher at odds with the young and shrewd supply teacher. A headmaster obsessed with results and a history teacher who thinks he‘s a fool.
In Alan Bennett‘s play, staffroom rivalry and the anarchy of adolescence provoke insistent questions about history and how you teach it; about education and its purpose.
The action of the play takes place in Cutlers‘ Grammar School, Sheffield, a fictional boys‘ grammar school in the north of England. Set in the early 1980s, the play follows a group of history pupils preparing for the Oxbridge entrance examinations under the guidance of three teachers (Hector, Irwin and Lintott) with contrasting styles.
Hector, an eccentric teacher, delights in knowledge for its own sake, but the headmaster ambitiously wants the school to move up the academic league table; Irwin, a supply teacher, is hired to introduce a rather more cynical and ruthless style of teaching.
CAST
Irwin Francis Pindar
Hector Ian Creese
Headmaster Richard Peachey
Mrs Lintott Lisa Arnold
Posner Oliver Bying
Dakin Johnny Craze
Scripps Richie Halsey-Watson
Timm TBA
Rudge Laurence Easton
Lockwood Ashley Gillard
Akthar Dan Shepard
Crowther Stewart Tomkins