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’.
