HISTORY has a habit of repeating itself, and so here comes the second production of Alan Bennett's The History Boys to be staged in York in 2015.

The spring term show was in the hands of York community company Pick Me Up Theatre as part of a top-class Education, Education, Education double bill at the Joseph Rowntree Theatre; the summer term brings the Sell A Door professionals to the Grand Opera House in Kate Saxon's gold-star national tour.

If you missed the first, make sure to chalk up a visit to the second, a performance that retains all the energy, exuberance, intelligence and mischief-making of its February run at Hull New Theatre, even if the second half suffers its usual mid-way lull.

Should you not have seen the 2004 work that topped the 2013 English Touring Theatre poll for Britain's most popular play, the setting is an early-1980s' South Yorkshire grammar school where loose-cannon English teacher Hector (Richard Hope) is sharpening the scholarship class for their Oxbridge exams.

His subject for the term is General Studies and that means generally studying outside the defined curriculum, broadening minds, challenging the status quo, pushing boundaries: boundaries that he is to overstep when his hands stray.

This elephant in the room is a large one, all the more so after the Savile revelations, but Bennett does not shy away from Hector being a "twerp" for his fumbling indiscretions, while admiring the unconventional teaching methods that take in lessons conducted in French, re-enacting classic movie scenes and singing show songs.

Hector, played as a wounded classroom colossus by Hope, is teaching his bright sparks for "the long littleness of life" that will replace the precocity of youth. Disruptive new supply teacher Irwin (a shrewd, shrewish Mark Field) is smart but artless and heartless, as he drives along a narrower path than Hector, the pragmatist urging others to go the risk-taking extra mile in their essays. Christopher Ettridge's ever-exasperating Headmaster is a results-obsessed prig; Susan Twist is the essence of common sense as enervated history teacher Mrs Lintott.

And what of the unruly, opinionated, confused, vibrant History Boys of the title? Under Saxon's direction, they combine an ensemble schoolroom bond with tremendous individual performances, especially from Kedar Williams-Stirling as cocksure star pupil Dakin and Steven Roberts as the delicate, troubled Posner.

The early-Eighties electro soundtrack of New Order and The Human League evokes the era's golden promise; Libby Watson's classroom design has period detail galore, while Hector's motorcycle hangs heavy over the set as a symbol of both rebellion and trouble to come. Witty, waspish and wary of education being streamlined and homogenised, The History Boys finds Bennett nailing history – "it's just one thing after another" – while skewering literature, sex and the conservative English way as only he can.

 

The History Boys, Grand Opera House, York, until Saturday; performances at 7.30pm plus 2.30pm, tomorrow and Saturday. Box office: 0844 871 3024 or at atgtickets.com/york