Eleanor Costello (Varsity): Have you tried to do anything different or unusual with the play?

Gaia Fay-Lambert: When we set out to put on this play, the original idea was to gender-swap the students, and we spent a lot of time thinking about what the impact of this would be – the first thing was that Hector’s ‘fiddling’ immediately became more sinister somehow, and one of the other key things was that a lot of the lines said by the students are very gendered, with a sort of ‘lad culture’ vibe. Casting the whole student body as female would have (hopefully) called some of these lines out. We immediately came up against licensing restrictions, with our contract saying that we couldn’t do anything to change the ‘intent’ of the play, particularly gender-swapping. In the end we cast the students gender-blind, though they’re still all technically playing males. I love the way that the female and male cast still create the same dynamic as in the film. It also helps (I hope) to dissipate the idea that I think still hangs around comedy, that females can’t be as blatantly funny as males.

EC: The play is set in the 1980s. Do you think that it’s something that will still resonate with students at Cambridge?

GFB: I think that it’s massively a product of its time, and I think Bennett was very conscious of this when he wrote it. What strikes me about the play is that the ‘paedophilia’ isn’t really an issue to the characters – when Hector is caught out, the Headmaster has more of an issue with the homosexual aspect of it than anything else. If the play was set today, there’s no way Hector could get away with it. The other thing that’s come up a lot in rehearsals is how unrealistic it is that eight students from one school could all get places at Oxbridge for the same subject. It’s been really difficult for everyone to get their heads around the idea that everyone could get in, since it’s something that we have all been through ourselves. I think it still resonates with students at Cambridge though, perhaps far more so than it would have done on Broadway. It creates a weird sort of dual nostalgia – both for when it’s set, a time we never experienced, and for moments in our own lives.

EC: Has your idea of the play or any of the characters changed over the rehearsal process?

GFB: I don’t think the characters themselves have really changed, but one thing which does keep developing is this idea of Hector’s voice. We established right at the start of the process that he has lived in Yorkshire all of his life, but his words aren’t actually written with any Yorkshire dialect, and in the film version Richard Griffiths doesn’t have an accent either. We’ve tried it a few different ways, with a broad accent and without, but ultimately we’ve ended up coming up with a whole backstory for exactly why and how Hector speaks the way he does. In terms of the play itself, my ideas have changed somewhat. I feel like it’s quite obvious that Alan Bennett was discussing the play with Nicholas Hytner, the original director, while he wrote it, since there’s some bits that have us tearing our hair out over stage directions (or lack thereof). Since the first rehearsal, my idea of the play has developed into thinking of it as a type of collective memory that’s set in the past, rather than being in real-time with the audience, which resolves some of the issues of characters speaking out to the audience for instance.

EC: The History Boys has been frequently voted as one of the nation’s best-loved plays. Why do you think that it is so popular?

GFB: I think it’s because the teachers themselves are so universal. Everyone can relate to the types of teachers it portrays – the inspirational one, the one whose lessons always seemed fun but irrelevant, and the one who just spoon-feeds you the facts, who you’re massively grateful for when you get to the exam! The boys themselves are very relatable, and you can feel that you yourself are part of the play. The characters are also all completely human. They all have very evident flaws, but you can’t help but like them. The History Boys manages to strike a perfect balance between humour and poignancy. I just hope that we can do it justice!