Alan Bennett's The History Boys, the big winner at the 2006 Tony Awards with six statuettes including one for Best Play, has extended its limited Broadway engagement by four weeks. The show will now run at the Broadhurst Theatre through October 1.
The History Boys centers on eight bright, funny students Samuel Barnett, Dominic Cooper, Samuel Anderson, James Corden, Sacha Dhawan, Andrew Knott, Jamie Parker and Russell Tovey trying to get into colleges and the year that influenced the rest of their lives. Guiding them are a maverick English teacher 2006 Tony winner Richard Griffiths, a headmaster Clive Merrison obsessed with results and a strong-willed history teacher 2006 Tony winner Frances de la Tour resistant to change.
The production, directed by 2006 Tony winner Nicholas Hytner, opened on the Great White Way to much acclaim on April 24. In his Broadway.com Review of the play, Rob Kendt wrote: "Bennett's rip-roaringly enjoyable The History Boys is almost entirely a pedantic exercise; its point of view is never far from view. But Bennett possesses such a large and sympathetic vision, and such a smart ear for incisive, nearly Wildean language, that this teaching lesson is like none we ever received in school. Certainly director Nicholas Hytner's handsome, free-flowing, ideally cast production, which comes to us whole from London's National Theatre, helps Bennett's medicine go down smoothly. But the play's the thing, and in the midst of an intellectually challenged Broadway season, we might embrace The History Boys as a wise elder whose company enriches, even if the message he bears is a tad shopworn."
The Broadhurst Theatre's next tenant, the revival of Les Miserables, is scheduled to start performances on October 21.
