"It's just one fucking thing after another"

History, that is - as defined by Rudge, one of Alan Bennett's History Boys.

Set in a northern grammar school in the 1980s and first produced in 2004, 'The History Boys' achieves that key objective of art - namely successfully embodying abstractions in situations which on the whole feel very real and characters who are more than merely two-dimensional. Its central subject is the tension between learning as a means to an end (that end being passing Oxbridge entrance exams) and
knowledge for knowledge's sake.

These two different concepts are personified in Irwin, a teacher drafted in by a pretentious headmaster desperate for the kudos of having Oxbridge entrants, and Hector, an old-fashioned master nearing retirement age and somewhat left behind by the times whose lessons involve everything from brief performances from classic movies to an elaborate roleplaying session set in a French brothel during which the pupil-participants must only use the subjunctive.

As might be anticipated, the play doesn't fall down on one side or the other, mainly because the initially anal and focussed Irwin comes to seem more human and, in his own way, as keen to encourage independent thinking and behaviour as Hector (if only as a kind of gimmick to wow examiners and interviewing panels). The play's final words on the matter go to Hector: "Pass the parcel. That's sometimes all you can do. Take it, feel it and pass it on. Not for me, not for you, but for someone, somewhere, one day. Pass it on, boys. That's the game I want you to learn. Pass it on".

As someone inclined to lament the disappearance of learning for its own sake and the increasing emphasis on all higher education courses being a stepping stone to a career, it was a play that fascinated me from the start. Equally engaging, though, are the frequent debates over the nature and definition of history and the personal drama of Posner (played superbly by Steven Webb), the awkward, insecure and lovesick boy gradually and painfully coming to terms with his sexuality.

Though Bennett's excellent dialogue packs plenty of laughs (not least in the swearing, which appropriately suggests a childish glee in the playwright at having naughty words said out loud in a theatre setting), it's not always comfortable viewing. One theme running throughout is the appropriateness - or, rather, inappropriateness - of intimate teacher-pupil relations. No doubt some members of the audience will have felt uneasy, as I did at times, at being encouraged to sympathise with Hector, whose paeodophilic behaviour is essentially excused as an eccentric indiscretion.

It's perhaps understandable given the play's setting, but the presence of a solitary female, the teacher Mrs Lintott, feels tokenistic - even if Bennett has her draw attention to the fact in a monologue in which she acknowledges she exists as a sounding-board for other (male) characters. The headmaster's secretary, subject of one of the pupil's amorous physical explorations, appears only as a figure on the video screens between scenes. Similarly tokenistic, I felt, are the black pupil Crowther, whose character is one of the least developed, and the "thicko" Rudge (perhaps not surprisingly blessed / cursed with a Middlesbrough accent) who only manages to get into Oxbridge through good old-fashioned nepotism.

But there is far more to enjoy and admire about 'The History Boys' than to quibble with.

So, do I want to see the film? Perhaps, but not just yet - it would be unfair to have both in mind and spend the whole time comparing them.

A final word about the New Theatre. Saturday was our first visit since the move to Cardiff - long overdue. In contrast to the modernity and democratic unsegregated seating arrangement of the REP in Birmingham, the New Theatre is very much a proper old-school theatre, complete with stalls, circle, upper circle and boxes. We had managed to book cheap seats for what was the last night of the run early on, which meant the front row of the upper circle, fairly central. We hadn't bargained on the metal railing which seriously impaired our view, but fortunately, we had sufficient leg room to be able to slide down in our plush not-particularly-comfortable seats and watch through the gap between the railing and the low wall. Not quite the contortionists' act it might sound like, and well worth tickets which were less than a tenner each.