I first saw The History Boys at its maiden run at the National Theatre in London in 2004 and can recall mistakenly thinking that, while it was a wonderful play and production, it was unlikely that anyone would ever try to run it in New Zealand, so steeped is it in English literature and humour, so challenging in text for contemporary actors. But in a later article in the London Review of Books Alan Bennett, the playwright wrote about how the cast of that production had to be trained in the history, language and literature of the play for several months before staging, and suddenly it seemed that it might be pulled off.

Indeed, there have been several very successful runs in New Zealand since then and now Gaye Poole has tackled it with the Carving in Ice Company, with such a brilliant production that I am delighted to have been so wrong. 

Clive Lambdin comes into his own as Hector, the lovable but flawed General Studies teacher of the grammar school leavers, in a beautifully judged and nuanced performance. He is nearing retirement and the ambitious head master – here given a robust reading by Nick Clothier – forces him to share his classes with a new history teacher, Irwin, who has been hired to cram the boys for their entrance exams and ensure they receive places at top English Universities.

Carl Watkins’ Irwin sustains an ambivalence and intensity that is most convincing, so that the tension between the two styles of teaching (“is it art or is it journalism?”) and the different ideals of learning generate a climax that is sexual; emotional as well as intellectual.

The boys are a wonderfully tight team of performers; all just past school age, yet relishing the chance to recreate the experience of English boys in the setting of 1980s Britain. The accents are imprecise but after a while they don’t matter, as the characters are so strongly delineated.

Philip Garrity as Posner carries off the many songs and solos, from love songs to marching songs to French café numbers that are part of Hector’s unpredictable and eccentric classroom technique. Garrity also conveys Posner’s anguish in owning his attraction to his classmate, despite the jibes of the other boys. His emotional courage is as moving as his outrage at Irwin’s suggestion that, to be noticed by the examiners, the boys make light of the holocaust. The object of his desire, Dakin (Sam Howard), unapologetically sexual, is the centre of many funny scenes: the French lesson role played as a brothel; his ‘assault’ on the body of the headmaster’s secretary, his ‘western front’, to name two.

The joking and ribaldry between the boys is fast and funny, with David Bowers-Mason and Callum Webber providing narrative links to the audience, Bowers-Mason also doing good work on the piano, while Conor Maxwell and Will Collin give particular pleasure as reluctant learners. Antony Aiono, Ryan Wood and Sam Domett must also be mentioned as distinctive and convincing history boys, forthright and funny.

The one female voice in the entire play, and it seems the school, Mrs Lintott, nicknamed ‘Totty’, is played with dignity and graceful irony by Fiona Sneyd. It is left to her to look forward to the futures of the boys as they leave the school and to reflect on the legacy of the learning they had received. Sneyd works the traverse staging of the set extremely well, her warmth and wit carrying to both sides of the audience and driving home her character’s sensible and compassionate perspective.

This is a superb piece of theatre from the old land, brought to new life in a new land by a company that is in its prime. Gaye Poole and company must be congratulated for such a strong production. 

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