The History Boys Wyndhams, London WC2
A Family Affair Arcola, London E8
Rapunzel BAC, London SW11
Alan Bennett's bittersweet play about a group of Oxbridge hopefuls at a northern grammar school was an instant hit when it opened at the National Theatre in 2004. Last year, director Nicholas Hytner successfully transferred The History Boys from stage to screen (just as he had Bennett's The Madness of George III). Now it's back in the theatre with a new cast every bit as sharp, funny, moving and engaging as the first.
William Chubb adds substance to the two-dimensional headmaster and Hull graduate determined to push his pupils to Oxbridge: 'I'm thinking league tables.' Stephen Moore and Orlando Wells are beautifully counterpointed as the masters who teach the candidates. Moore as the older, tweedier, unconventional English master obsessed with emotional truth (and with boys' balls); Wells as the boyish, thrusting, 'What has truth got to do with it?' history teacher and - as we see in the flash-forwards that frame the play - future television historian and political spin doctor.
These men push their pupils to develop their minds through debates that, although unrealistic (what classroom discussion has the sparkle of Bennett dialogue?) are utterly convincing. The eight actors in the boys' roles look, move and sound so much like a class of that age - sliding from slouch to strut, from banter to teacher-baiting, from sexual boasting to puppy-dog fawning - that you expect the theatre to be pervaded by that distinctive teenage smell of hormones and sweat (it is not). The complexities of their relationships and feelings are as much part of their awakening into the adult world as is their intellectual development.
This emotional complexity is what makes the play's core question - 'What is the purpose of education?' - so compelling. In one scene, Moore's character listens to a sexually confused pupil (who suffers an unrequited love for one of his classmates - a perfectly pitched performance by Steven Webb) recite 'Drummer Hodge'. The two of them discuss Hardy's poem and the way a writer who seems to understand your inner thoughts makes it seem as if 'a hand has reached out and taken yours'. There is a table between them. Each has a hand on the table. They do not touch. This image, dense and moving, is stage poetry at its best.
A mere glance at the publication date of Alexander Ostrovsky's A Family Affair and the history boys would have understood why Nicholas I banned it from the Moscow stage. In 1850, two years after liberal revolutions engulfed Europe, sweeping princes from their thrones, the tsar was hardly likely to smile on a satire about private greed and public corruption. Ostrovsky's disgrace, though, was short-term: sacked from the civil service he turned to full-time writing and became Russia's most prolific playwright.
Here, Bolshov (a bald-headed, puff-chested, blustering Jonathan Coyne perfectly combining crafty rogue, strutting domestic tyrant and harassed trader) is a merchant with a problem: all his clients insist on paying credit not cash, then, rather than settle their debts, declare themselves bankrupt. A disreputable, dipsomaniac solicitor (Glyn Pritchard's briefcase-hugging, greasy-haired manipulator) advises Bolshov to follow their example and sign away his goods to his fawning assistant, Lazar (Philip Arditti), on condition that they will be returned once Bolshov's creditors have settled.
This move, however, releases Lazar's inner Uriah Heep. He seizes the opportunity to woo the boss's stuck-up daughter (Sally Leonard's shrieking monster of calculated self-interest). The two conspire to keep the old man's goods and condemn him to a debtor's prison.
As the venal pair indulge in a clothes-ripping frenzy of self-gratification, Naomi Wilkinson's simple but evocative set changes around them - drawing-room chaise longue and occasional table are replaced by boudoir mirror and flounce-covered sofa - while Bow and Bellows play a belting, Russian-flavoured accompaniment on accordion and violin. The couple's superficiality and self-centredness is beautifully expressed by Arditti in a simple but telling moment: he clasps his trophy wife to his bosom and looks over her shoulder into the mirror while he embraces her, a satisfied smile on his face. Serdar Bilis's cracking production gives the lie to Dostoevsky's view that Ostrovsky's work was 'too Russian for Europe' - the temptations of over-extended credit are universal.
Rapunzel delivers another lesson in economics, when Paul Hunter's self-proclaimed 'minor character' explains inflation in a solo comic riff involving an ice-cream-shop bell and two invisible children. This is one of many deliciously imaginative moments in director Emma Rice's first attempt at a children's show. Anyone who saw her acclaimed production, Nights at the Circus, will not be surprised to find that the action takes place above and below the wooden trestle stage - as well as on it and through it. Rapunzel (a winsome Edith Tankus), condemned to her tower, is hoisted up on a trapeze. When her prince comes along, the two of them swing through the air to a pop beat bashed out by a boiler-suited band of fellow actors. Mother Gothel (a gleefully wicked Mike Shepherd: 'Not all herbalists are healers!') tumbles through a trapdoor to re-emerge as a nasty-looking pot plant. In spite of its aerial exploits, though, the production never really soars: Annie Siddons's script jumbles a number of folk-tale elements together, fragmenting the action and hobbling the momentum. But the evening is full of fun and nobody comes away disappointed.
· Susannah Clapp is away
