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History Lessons
Jul. 9th, 2004 01:04 amSomething I'd been looking forward to for about six weeks or so took place yesterday - a theatre trip to the NT to see "The History Boys" with Parrot Knight and Sister Parrot. And completely and utterly dazzling it was too.
Most of my previous theatre-going was done for school and college - a Volpone here, a Macbeth there - and the difference between them and the last three plays that I've seen has been the sheer pace of the scenes these days. The blackouts and scene changes in "The History Boys" are garnished with wonderful interlude films, shot in black and white, of the school and the characters, which prove two things:
a) A lot of 80s pop songs have fantastic instrumental breaks - "Rio", "Will You", "Baggy Trousers".
b) Clive Merrison, Richard Griffiths, Stephen Campbell Moore and Frances de la Tour are terrific screen as well as stage actors, conveying a wealth of character detail with just the slightest expression.
(Clive Merrison, incidentally, more and more resembles Sidney Paget's classic illustration of Professor Moriarty in "The Final Problem").
I'm not entirely convinced that I wasn't taught by Mrs Lintott at some stage at school : Frances de la Tour captures a certain blend of world-weariness, savoir faire and steely authority perfectly.
Above and beyond the excellence of the jokes, the performances, and the discussion of ideas - debates about history and education played out as personal tragi-comedy - I think what I will remember most about "The History Boys" are the memories it stirred of my own education. Waiting in a strange room up in Oxford before going for an interview ; going to General Studies tutorials (where, indeed, I first heard Wittgenstein's "...whereof we must be silent").
And one of my favourite lines - "Make lots of money when you leave Oxford - and don't give any of it to them!"
Most of my previous theatre-going was done for school and college - a Volpone here, a Macbeth there - and the difference between them and the last three plays that I've seen has been the sheer pace of the scenes these days. The blackouts and scene changes in "The History Boys" are garnished with wonderful interlude films, shot in black and white, of the school and the characters, which prove two things:
a) A lot of 80s pop songs have fantastic instrumental breaks - "Rio", "Will You", "Baggy Trousers".
b) Clive Merrison, Richard Griffiths, Stephen Campbell Moore and Frances de la Tour are terrific screen as well as stage actors, conveying a wealth of character detail with just the slightest expression.
(Clive Merrison, incidentally, more and more resembles Sidney Paget's classic illustration of Professor Moriarty in "The Final Problem").
I'm not entirely convinced that I wasn't taught by Mrs Lintott at some stage at school : Frances de la Tour captures a certain blend of world-weariness, savoir faire and steely authority perfectly.
Above and beyond the excellence of the jokes, the performances, and the discussion of ideas - debates about history and education played out as personal tragi-comedy - I think what I will remember most about "The History Boys" are the memories it stirred of my own education. Waiting in a strange room up in Oxford before going for an interview ; going to General Studies tutorials (where, indeed, I first heard Wittgenstein's "...whereof we must be silent").
And one of my favourite lines - "Make lots of money when you leave Oxford - and don't give any of it to them!"
