Alan Bennett, the bigotry boys' headmaster

For his personal gain, gay playwright Alan Bennett would like you to forget recent history, pretend the queer rights movement never happened, and recreate those heavenly days when embracing gay identity meant becoming a washed up pedophile, impotent cripple, or insane recluse. And with the transfer from London's West End to New York's Great White Way of his repugnantly, unabashedly bigoted and self-loathing play The History Boys, it looks like Mr. Bennett is gaining considerably from his homophobic lapse in memory. I attended last night's opening performance at the The Broadhurst Theatre and witnessed decades of queer liberation getting pissed on to thunderous applause.

Before I go on, I should say that The National Theatre's well-executed production features a company that skillfully elicits compassion, inspired yet efficient direction, and admirable production design that includes sudden colors in stark gray classrooms and simple and effective video. The play inself masterfully handles rhetorical language and makes intriguing insights about commemorating events to erase them, subjunctive futures, and constructed histories. Unfortunately, being articulate and well-produced (and himself queer) does not make Mr. Bennett any less bigoted, just as being articulate and well-produced did not make Hitler any less an anti-Semetic monster.

Here are the three queer characters: 1) Hector, a 60-something general studies teacher who fondles the cutest boys while driving them home on his motorbike; 2) Irwin, a mid-20's history teacher bold in rewriting the world's history, but weak and filled with trepidation in having a personal one; and completing the multi-generational hate-fest is 3) Posner, a boy in his final year of grammar school exploring and embracing his queerness. Throw in straight boy Dakin and have him dangle sexual favors in front of all three so they are reduced to pathetic, panting lap dogs, and you've got an award-winning play!