Wednesday night: The History Boys
Beware young Brits wearing ties
Don't let the ties fool you.
Lakeview's upstart TimeLine Theatre Company managed to leapfrog big guns Steppenwolf and Goodman by snatching up the rights to Alan Bennett's Tony Award-winning play The History Boys, and it opens tonight. Founded by a group of scrappy young DePaul theater graduates in 1997, TimeLine produces plays covering history, with surprising success. Securing the Chicago première of Bennett's play is the company’s biggest coup to date—previously the domain of the giants of Chicago theater.
On the surface, The History Boys sounds like any other play about growing up. Set in a boys’ grammar school in the north of England in the early 1980s, it follows a group of history pupils preparing for an Oxbridge entrance exam under the guidance of three wildly different teachers. What the students learn, of course, are life lessons far beyond what's assigned in school. It sounds clichéd, but The History Boys is a moving blend of comedy and tragedy, containing a depth not present in the American "Influential Teacher" genre regurgitated in Dead Poets Society, Mr. Holland’s Opus, Dangerous Minds, and seemingly thousands of others. The play was a smash hit first in London before moving to Broadway, where it won the 2006 Tony Award for Best Play.
While TimeLine has had its fair share of hits, such as Kate Fodor’s World War II-themed Hannah And Martin and musical Fiorello!, this is the biggest production for the company to date. In anticipation, TimeLine has even gone so far as to trumpet the arrival of new chairs for the audience to further whet appetites for the big show. Here's hoping the chairs have a massage function—it's a two-hour, 40-minute deal.
