The History Boys

Hytner’s direction of Alan Bennett’s The History Boys (2004) was rewarded with an Olivier Award and, after the play’s transfer to Broadway, a Tony Award. He later directed a film version (2006) as well. Other shows for the RNT included Travelling Light (2012), Othello (2013), and Great Britain (2014).

Bennett’s play The History Boys garnered both the Critics’ Circle Theatre Award and the Laurence Olivier Award for best new play, and Bennett also received the Olivier Special Award. Set in Yorkshire in the 1980s, the play featured a clash of values between two teachers coaching a…

Bennett’s play The History Boys (filmed 2006) premiered in 2004; it portrayed pupils in a school in the north of England during the 1980s. Although Cloud Atlas (2004)—a far-reaching book by David Mitchell, one of the more ambitious novelists to emerge during this period—contained chapters that envisage…

…Timms in Alan Bennett’s play The History Boys at the National Theatre. He remained with the play in 2006 as it toured to Hong Kong, Australia, and New Zealand and opened a Tony Award-winning run on Broadway. That same year he reprised his role in the play’s film adaptation. For…