Since
his emergence as one quarter of the Beyond The Fringe team
Alan Bennett has cemented his reputation as one of Britain’s most
successful playwrights. His work for the stage includes Forty
Years On, Habeas Corpus, Kafka’s Dick, An Englishman
Abroad and A Question of Attribution. He adapted The Wind
In The Willows for the National Theatre in the 1990s, and
wrote The Madness of George III.
Directed by Nicholas Hytner, this
was turned into an acclaimed film in 1994, re-titled The
Madness of King George. Among Bennett’s other writing
for the screen is A Private Function and Prick Up Your
Ears, while his award winning television work includes
Talking Heads.
In 2004 he reunited with Hytner to bring The
History Boys to the National Theatre, an 80s set story of eight aspirant
grammar school pupils sitting their Oxbridge exams. Guided
by the twin teaching influences of the inspirational but
flawed Hector (Richard Griffiths) and the cynical Irwin (Stephen
Campbell Moore) they find themselves torn between romance
and pragmatism at an important stage in their lives.
How personal a project was The History Boys for you?
“It was personal to me in the sense that I went to
a northern grammar school, a state school in Leeds, which
didn’t normally send pupils to Oxford or Cambridge.
Our year was not particularly clever I think, but the headmaster
had himself been to Cambridge and decided to try and push
some of us to go through the scholarship examinations. About
half a dozen of us did get in, not all reading history – in
that sense it’s not like the play – but I did
history, so I suppose in that sense it mirrors my own experience.”
And university did prove a life
changing experience for you, leading to Beyond The Fringe
and your subsequent writing and performing career, didn’t
it?
“What happened in those days was, before you went
to university you had to do your national service. It happened
that in my national service I went on a course to learn Russian
and that course was taught at Cambridge. So I spent a year
at Cambridge, I’d got a place to study at the university
proper afterwards, but I thought that since I’d been
to Cambridge now maybe I ought to try to go to Oxford. So
I ended up going to Oxford.”
When did you and Nicholas Hytner think that this could be
another film?
“I never thought of it as a film really. We didn’t
start talking about it until it had been on at the National
for nine months or so. And then he said if we were to make
a film of it it would have to be in the summer holidays [to
get a suitable school location], so we ought to think about
it. We talked about it and everyone in the cast was keen.
We then devised the method with [producer] Kevin Loader of
financing it. Then I started writing the script, though there
wasn’t much writing to do, it was mostly cutting and
Nick was as good at that as I was. He’s as responsible
for the script as I am.”
It was important to secure the original
cast members, particularly the eight ‘boys’ who originated their roles at
the National, wasn’t it?
“Yes, though you would have been a brave man to tell
them that their roles were going to be played by somebody
else. There was never any question that it would be re-cast,
they had such a grip on their characters. But they’d
enjoyed doing it, and they’d enjoyed doing the film
and the fact that they’re at the start of their careers
and they’ve had a success like this was wonderful.”
How much did they bring to the development of their characters?
“When I wrote the script originally I had a list of
names, this was before we cast anybody, but I didn’t
really know what they were going to look like or what they
would be like. And so I just wrote down ‘Boy 1’, ‘Boy
2’, ‘Boy 3’ and then Nick allotted the
stuff, according to the boys who turned up. We found that
Timms, who’s played by James Corden, was very funny
so he tended to get funnier lines. Once you found he could
do a lot with them you tend to write more for him. Even when
I was writing extra lines for the film script I’d still
put ‘Boy 1’, ‘Boy 2’, ‘Boy
3’, and then left it to Nick to share them out.”
The boys are great in their roles,
but clearly the casting of Richard Griffiths as Hector
was equally crucial, wasn’t
it?
“I’d not thought of him for it, although I had
worked with him before. But once you cast him it all fell
into place somehow and it did seem like you couldn’t
have thought of anybody else – which is what good casting
is. They inhabit the role so completely that you can’t
see round it any more.”
The production seems to make no compromises to the very
English story and setting, and yet you enjoyed great success
with it on Broadway. That must have been very pleasing.
“When it went to New York I was booked to go about
a fortnight before it opened in order to listen to a preview
audience and see what jokes didn’t work. I went along
and I couldn’t really see there was any difference.
The audience seemed to respond in exactly the same way as
the London audiences had done. So we ended up not altering
anything. At the time it seemed more of a gamble, but in
retrospect you can see that the theme of trying to get into
a good university, and the clash between an education that’s
based on examinations and qualifications and an education
for life such as Hector represents, that’s a fairly
universal thing. In that sense it’s not surprising.”
Now that the stage run has ended,
it must be nice to have a version of it preserved forever
on film, isn’t it?
“It’s a particular pleasure because in fact
the film is a very good account of the play. It’s shorter
obviously, and there are some parts of it that have been
cut. But the actual spirit of the film is the same as that
of the play.”
How much of a political piece did you intend it to be, either
in the 1980s Thatcher era setting, or did you perhaps have
some more modern reading in mind?
“It’s only set in the 1980s for a reason which
has nothing to do with politics really. It’s because
that was the last time that Oxford and Cambridge examined
in the way that they do in the film. That’s why it
was set in the 80s. I didn’t think of it as a political
parable in any way, and politics isn’t particularly
referred to. I think that kind of teaching though, which
Irwin represents, is much more prevalent now than probably
it was 20 or 30 years ago. Teachers who’ve been to
see the play say that there just isn’t time for the
kind of teaching Hector does now, that their schedules are
so horrendous that if they wanted to teach like that now
they couldn’t do it. And it wouldn’t be fair
on the children because they are keen to get through their
exams, if they want to get anywhere.”
The thumping 80s soundtrack is surely
the least likely of any that has accompanied one of your
movies, isn’t
it?
“It’s all a mystery to me, I didn’t have
anything to do with it. When we were choosing the music for
the film I think Nick asked the boys what they’d like
and they made a list. It was mainly a list of things they
couldn’t stand. They wanted as much of Kate Bush as
they could have, they didn’t want Madness – which
I like. So a lot of them were their choices.”
The actors who play your History
Boys are about as old now as you were when you found success
with Beyond The Fringe. And yet they feel so much younger,
don’t they?
“I’m still, in my 70s, trammelled and inhibited
by class and upbringing and all that. But when the Prince
of Wales came to the charity screening we had in aid of the
Prince’s Trust, and he and the Duchess of Cornwall
came round, James Corden was so totally uninhibited by either
of them. He’d say ‘that’s a lovely dress,
I do love that dress’. I thought ‘I wish I was
as carefree as that’.”
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