Over in Leeds a cast of 11 males and one female have been brought together for a fresh revival of Alan Bennett’s The History Boys which plays at the West Yorkshire Playhouse before embarking on a national tour. Under the ever careful eye of director Christopher Luscombe .

The Public Reviews editor John Roberts headed over to the Yorkshire City and shared a lunchtime with Actors Kyle Redmond (Dakin), Ben Lambert (Irwin) and director Christopher Luscombe to find out more about the show and to try and get a few of their school boy secrets out into the open!

I was meant to be doing a double interview with Ben (BL) and Kyle (KR) but it seemed Kyle had been held up by the Theatre Headmaster and would be having to stay slightly behind in rehearsals, although he does come and join us when he has been well and truly told off!

What can you tell us about your role and the production?

BL: my role is a teacher that is brought in to get the students into Oxford and Cambridge, and sort of turn their knowledge upside down. He teaches the boys not to be so obvious and indeed to be perverse, to not to conform to the status quo and to challenge what they already know.

Have you been influenced at all by the previous National Theatre/Film of History Boys?

Ben Lambert

BL: No, I think the writer Alan Bennett has a really strong presence in the piece, and I think learning to discover the piece afresh for yourself as opposed to what he gives you in a way – not that it is separate but you have to find who these characters are for you so that journey is an individual one and you have to shrug off anything that has gone before you, but that doesn’t matter so much as our production is so different. There are 4 different scripts; the original, the rehearsal script, the published script which got reworked during the original National Theatre rehearsals and we now have this 4th version. Not that the audiences will see a vast difference but they are there. This is a completely new production, a new director and creative team, unlike other time which is a carbon copy of the original. I think the fact that I am working with individuals who are so unique that they bring strong elements of themselves into the piece too!

I am presuming with such a large male cast that there have been several pranks pulled on each other?

BL: (Laughs) Yeah, yeah there have, I couldn’t give you any anecdotes of exact things that have taken place, but there is certainly an excitement and a joking around that you see in the play which takes place in the rehearsal room amongst everyone. There is a great camaraderie amongst the cast, but you get that in most companies, but there is something in the fact that the characters in the piece are a well knitted group, which translates over into the rehearsals.

At this point Kyle Redmond joins the conversation.

After playing at The West Yorkshire Playhouse you are heading off on tour, what are you most looking forward to?

KR: I’m most looking forward to going around to all the different theatres and visiting places I have never been to before.

What Items will defiantly be going into your tour bag?

BL: Oh, just boring stuff really however Kyle should say his computer games.

KR: Yeah my Nintendo DS, My PSP – having the odd game of Ghosts and Goblins – old time classics!

As actors are there any roles which you would most like to play?

BL: I think less and less you get actors who have that now, however I would love to play Mercutio, I’ve played Romeo and would love to do Mercutio, but most actors now tend to be more focussed on Film and you can’t do that with film otherwise you would be saying that you would have loved to have been doing something that someone else had done.

KR: Oh I don’t know, Id love to play someone like Batman or Spider-Man

Well that is a possibility now Toby Maguire has gone from the Spiderman Franchise!

KR: Has he? I’ll be back in a bit I’m off to speak to my agent! I suppose though as you go through life and your age changes so do the choices of parts you want to play but really i have been lucky in the parts I have played so far – Dakin in this production, Romeo etc but I would love to play Troilus in Troilus and Cressida.

What advice would you give to anyone wanting to become an actor?

KR: Make sure you really love it, because if you don’t you will be wasting several years of your life, which so many people do, they think I’d love to do that and then just fall away and drop off the boat very early on! Make sure it is the only thing you want to do!

BL: I’d agree with that, I would also say that once you have decided that it is what you want to do, work really hard at it, keep working at it.

KR: There’s a great Ali Mohammed quote “It’s not the fighting in the ring, it’s what goes on before that counts” but that is very misquoted and paraphrased!

What was the most common thing on your school reports?

KR: Has so much potential, which actually made me think, as I got really good results so did they think I was so much better than I really was? I got an A in one class and then to still say he has so much potential seemed a little dubious but I guess they tried to bring me down a little bit!

BL: He needs to talk less – Ben seems to enjoy lessons, but enjoys talking to other people too much and being the centre of attention.

Other than Drama what subjects did you enjoy most at school?

KR: This is going to sound really clichéd now but I loved History. When you read History you tend to imagine yourself in that place or being that person.

BL: I used to love History too, it felt like a bunch of stories, and you could just talk about them, I also enjoyed English Lit.

If you could travel to any time in history what would it be and why?

KR: I’d go back to when Liverpool were winning the league

BL: I’d love to go back to the 1940’s the era, the style and the fashion would be pretty spectacular.

KR: but really I would love to go back to Roman Times and rule the Empire, meeting Jesus would be pretty cool too!

BL: Your answers are brilliant! At one hand you want to see Liverpool win the league and on the other you want to rule an Empire and meet Jesus. –(in a husky voice) in a far off time in a galaxy far away I want to be Darth Vader… maybe you could be Jesus and I could be Buddha and we could get together for a few hours one afternoon. (both start laughing)

Did you ever have any school boy crushes?

BL: Yeah – I think I probably had crushes on loads of my teachers.

KR: Ohhhh My RE teacher.

BL: Both my drama teachers, actually I think I probably had crushes on all of them!

Both Kyle and Ben head off to finish their lunch hour, reminiscing over school boy crushes as director Christopher Luscombe joins me over a slice of Christmas cake and a cup of tea!

You originally trained as an actor what made you move into the directing arena?

Well I didn’t actually train, I worked as an actor. I went to university and fell straight into acting. I was an actor for 17 years, but I feel into directing by luck really. I was working at the RSC for 7 years and as a fundraiser I organised and directed a small Sunday night entertainment called the Shakespeare Revue, which became so popular that it became part of the RSC Repertoire, it then had a transfer to the West End, and then by chance I was classed as a director. I then went back to acting as I thought that it was perhaps just a fluke, but I really enjoyed it, I loved having a say in how things should be put together…so it sort of simmered away in the back of my head and I stumbled across a Noel Coward Play called Star Quality which had never been performed before. So I got that on with Penelope Keith and Bill Kenwright produced it and that really established me as a director. From then on I have never really looked back, strangely by chance I stumbled

on what I love doing best.

This year you will be the director with the most number 1 shows on tour in the UK, how does that feel and how do you fit it all in?

(Laughs) Well let’s take them one by one. Rocky Horror I originally did four years ago and It has just kept on going, so great, obviously I keep putting in the new casts, Enjoy an idea came along that we should revive that for a tour and then History Boys was offered to me, that was the only real challenge – between History Boys and Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime, but again it was a revival. If it had been offered to me as a new production I would have said no, but as it was my production and I already knew how it should be done, I thought I have got to direct it as no one else knows how it should be. So I have had the maddest of schedules but I have done it!

So are you still popping around the country and checking on your shows?

I have associate directors on the shows that are out on tour, who tend to look after how the show is running. So for example with Rocky Horror having a new narrator at each venue, luckily I don’t have to do that, obviously I do when I can, especially if I have a spare five minutes and geographically in the right area, I do like to think I am quite good unlike some directors I could mention at looking after my shows, so will pop in at various points and give some notes and bring the productions back on track. It’s a bit like plate spinning but I love it!

Is there a production that you would love to direct?

Not really, my favourite thing is when people come to me and ask me to direct a show, like Rocky Horror, I would never have thought about directing it, it was never on my desert island discs of theatrical productions, so I was very surprised when they offered it to me, But I now love it and it is one of my favourite things ever. If someone said what would I like to direct, I know I would chose something that I know really well, and how I would do them and stay within my comfort zone. I suppose History Boys would be one I would have said but it came to me and it is so up my street. It’s Alan Bennett who I absolutely adore and have done a lot of his plays before. It’s a world which I am familiar with as I have experienced a lot of it in my own life. I am not saying however that I am finding History Boys easy though, but it would have been one I would have suggested.

What is it about the plays of Alan Bennett that you like so much?

He’s a genius really…I just can’t get enough of it. He is very funny and the comedy is a real attraction for me. Even when he writes in his most serious points, he still manages to weave in humour, and I like the tone of serious drama and comedy that he has, almost bittersweet and that really appeals to me. I have got to know him a little over the years and I am very fond and grateful to him, growing up I was a fan of his work and to know be working with him is very strange. With Enjoy which didn’t have much success when it was first performed there are elements of the writing that still take my breath away to this day, but I have found that with other contemporaries of Bennett for example Alan Ayckbourn. One of the reasons I chose to do History Boys is that it is such a privilege to direct a piece in the home city of the writer and that he is still with us and able to ring him up and talk to him about it.

What changes are in this production compared to the National Theatre production?

There are a few little changes and tweaks which I have made in consultation with Alan Bennett, but it is still very much the same script that people would have seen at the National.

Did it cross your mind that perhaps it was a bit too soon to be directing a revival of the show?

Oh yes of course it did! But I did think that it was too good an opportunity to miss, and perhaps it may never come in my direction again, and to do it as said in Bennett’s home town, where as the previous production took place in London. The Play is set in Yorkshire and has so many local references to the localised area, but I knew I could get a great cast together and thought why not? Maybe it is a bit too soon after the National’s production but it is a very unusual play in the fact that most people in the street have heard about it. So I thought maybe it can withstand such a quick revival.

So have you experienced any school boy tom foolery within the cast?

Oh yes, but I was expecting it, Alan Bennett had already told me that the boys make rehearsals fun and they are. They are such a talented group and they make rehearsals hilarious to be in. There is a lot of serious chat too but there is always a laugh lurking just around the corner. I feel sorry for the only female in the cast but we do have a female assistant director and stage management team so they kind of level out the balance in the company somewhat.

What did your school report say?

The one I remember was a Geography report which said – he must kerb his sense of humour. I kind of feel incensed by that as if there is anything that has kept me going in this profession it is my sense of humour. So I was very wise not to take the teachers advice as they were very wrong. In PE I used to always get a poor but other than that I did ok.

What was your favourite subject at school?

English and that was down to having such a fantastic teacher, rather like the teacher in History Boys and I really feed off my experience of that teachers lessons and use them in rehearsals. He was very inspiring. I’m sure if he had taught physics I would have loved that subject as he had a real natural ability about him.

If you could go back in time to any event in history where would you go and why?

The Globe and I would see the original production of Hamlet, or in fact any of his plays that would suit me very well. I would love to know what a production back then was really like and what in fact the man himself was like.

History Boys runs at the West Yorkshire Playhouse from the 3rd Feb to the 6th March before embarking on a national tour. For more information on the run and the tour – click here.

Interview: Cast & Director of History Boys at the West Yorkshire Playhouse, 5.0 out of 5 based on 1 rating

Tags: Alan Bennett, Ben Lambert, Christopher Luscombe, History Boys, Interview, Kyle Redmond-Jones, Leeds, Tour, West Yorkshire Playhouse