THE roll call is complete for Pick Me Up Theatre's February 2015 production of Alan Bennett's classroom comedy The History Boys in York, as ticked off by director Robert Readman.

The boys will be played by Sam Baxter as Posner; George Stagnell as Dakin; Sam Hird as Scripps; Lee West as Timms; Riley Anderson as Crowther; Daniel McGuinness as Lockwood; Joe Huddo Hudson as Rudge and WilliamCampbell-Burrell as Akhtar. Campbell-Burrell is also the show's musical director.

Voted the "nation's favourite play" in a poll by English Touring Theatre in 2013, the former National Theatre hit will be staged at the Joseph Rowntree Theatre as part of Pick Me Up's school-themed double bill with Willy Russell's new musical version of Our Day Out.

The History Boys is set in a northern town in the late 1980s, where eight boys are being groomed for Oxbridge by Hector, an eccentric English master who teaches the boys the poetry he hopes will prepare them for the "long littleness of life".

The league-table-obsessed headmaster is not willing to leave them in Hector’s hands alone, however. Consequently, he employs Mr Irwin, a young teacher with a unique view on history and how to win an Oxbridge place, to complement the teaching methods of Hector and the much put-upon history teacher, Mrs Lintott.

As if soaking up W. H. Auden and A.E. Housman and understanding the causes of the Second World War were not sufficiently taxing, the boys must try to unravel their emerging sexualities and discover what school, university and education really mean.

Ian Small will play Hector and Barbara Johnson, Mrs Lintott, while two BBC Radio York presenters, Neil Foster and Adam Tomlinson, will take the roles of Mr Irwin and the Headmaster.

• The History Boys will be staged at the Rowntree Theatre next year on February 20, 21, 23, 25 and 26 at 7.30pm and on February 28 at 2.30pm. Tickets are on sale at pickmeuptheatre.com and yorktheatreroyal.co.uk or on 01904 623568.