17. The History Boys - Rose Kingston

Was a bit worried when I got  to my seat for this one, I'd gone for restricted view seats just to try them out (and because I can't afford non-restricted view seats - despite the discomfort I think it's the floor seats for me) and it looked like I was going to be missing half of the set. Thankfully though it turned out that the set was a lot more awesome than it appeared at first sight, I ended up really falling in love with it - very simple but there was something warmly familiar about watching them rearrange the mismatched tables in the classroom. Plus the regular use of a slow revolve was excellent, allowing us to catch different reactions and different people at different moments. Really lovely.

In some ways this was a bit of an odd one for me. I've never seen History Boys on stage, but I'm a big fan of the film and picked up the playtext last year (got a surprise signed copy) and have been eagerly awaiting a chance to catch a performance of it. Obviously the stage vs. film history is a bit of a convulated one and I did feel the production struggled a little bit knowing how to handle it, how to balance the audiences expectations from the film.

There were almost two different approaches in the performances from my perspective - which I ended up thinking about as the Posner Approach vs. the Scripps Approach - both of which had advantages and disadvantages. The contrast was fairly extreme - on one side we had Rob Delaney excellently in voice as Posner, who was definitely sticking closer to the film, to the extent that I found all his line deliveries ridiculously close to Sam Barnett's, if I'd closed my eyes I'm not sure I'd have known the difference. On the other extreme, was Harry Waller as Scripps who was completely different from Jamie Parker, so that I felt I was watching a completely different character.

Though both actors were excellent, I found both approaches a little bit unsettling for reasons I can't quite get a grip on. The other actors playing the boys fell somewhere between this spectrum and I enjoyed their performances greatly, with George Banks' Dakin and Ryan Saunders' Lockwood standing out as particular favourites for me. I also really loved Philip Franks as Hector.

Overall this production felt less poignant to me than the film but that didn't really matter as it was still an utterly enjoyable night. There's something so infectiously joyful about the boys - about their cleverness and excitement and anarchy - that you can't help but enjoy spending time with them. And this cast captured that perfectly.

One last picture and one last note before we go - Rose Kingston the below was a really strange choice of poster to put on the back of cubicle doors, as lovely as they all are, these are not the expressions I want watching me as I pee.